Women's perceived leadership weaknesses are actually strengths (of course)

[Triana]

http://news.duke.edu/2010/05/rosette.html

A perception of sensitivity and competence causes women to be evaluated as better leaders than men in comparable positions, says a recent study.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

DURHAM, N.C. -- The prevailing stereotypes that women in business are too sensitive or just not as competent as men form the frame of the glass ceiling. But once a woman has shattered that barrier to advancement, these same biases may work in her favor, according to a Duke University researcher.

A perception of sensitivity and competence causes women to be evaluated as better leaders than men in comparable positions, according to a recent study in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The research, led by assistant professor Ashleigh Shelby Rosette of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, showed that top women executives credited with responsibility for their own success can be viewed simultaneously as more competent and more relationship-oriented than men, leading them to be perceived as more effective leaders than their male counterparts.

“In business environments, even if women are thought to be sufficiently competent, they are frequently thought to be not very nice,” said Rosette. “But on the tiptop rungs of the corporate ladder, competence and niceness may have a certain level of compatibility for women top leaders.”

[jaxjulia]

1. Women are natural born leaders

I have been writing and speaking about women's leadership
capabilities since the 1970s and yet the same old arguments
continue in protest of women as leaders:
1.Women are simply too emotional. 
2.Women are family oriented, keepers of the hearth. 
3.Women are either harlots or madonnas, nothing in between. 

The most insidious argument of all is one of perspective: 
Women have no noticeable role that history records.

To fuel my argument that women are world class leaders
already, consider this:

Culture can be said to be sets of shared attitudes, values,
goals, practices that characterize a group of people (as in
individual cities, states, countries, etc.)

Collective unconscious (noun first used in 1917) can be
described as the Jungian prototype of the inherited part of
the unconscious mind that occurs in and is shared by all
members of a people or race.

Critical mass (noun first used in 1919) can be described as a
size or amount large enough to produce a particular result, or
as Malcolm Gladwell says, the tipping point.

The American culture and the world religious culture started
this collective unconscious transmission of the idea that the
female is secondary, second class, unfit for leadership except
in the home. This idea reached critical mass sometime in the
Middle Ages when the church and civic authorities were busy
burning women at the stake.

Those women who accept the responsibilities of leadership are
those women who continue the age old fight for recognition of
the more determined sex. 

It is the Nancy Pelosis, the Hillary Clintons,the Margaret
Thatchers,the Benazir Bhuttos,the Golda Meirs, and all third
millennium female leaders, especially in third world countries
in particular, that exemplify the capabilities of the
"second class" (!) sex.

The only people who believe women to be second class leaders
are those men and women who are threatened by strong women.

Now put that in your pipe and smoke it!!!

[Triana]

2. 'women have no noticeable role in history'

That's because they've been written out of it by men. Women have had quite significant roles in history. But - in the history books, they and the part they've played are excluded. Even women scientists and inventors have often seen credit and notoriety for their work go to men, instead.

[musette_sf]

3. Margaret Thatcher?

She exemplifies uniquely female capabilities like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter exempify uniquely female capabilities.

Which is to say, in no way whatsoever.