The “F” word: Feminism in outdoor education

A meta-analysis of 45 studies of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles found that female leaders were more transformational than male leaders and also engaged in more of the contingent reward behaviors that are a component of transactional leadership. Male leaders were generally more likely to manifest the other aspects of transactional leadership (active and passive management by exception) and laissez-faire leadership. Although these differences between male and female leaders were small, the implications of these findings are encouraging for female leadership because other research has established that all of the aspects of leadership style on which women exceeded men relate positively to leaders' effectiveness whereas all of the aspects on which men exceeded women have negative or null relations to effectiveness. Show more

A total of 242 subjects participated in 3 experimental studies investigating reactions to a woman's success in a male gender-typed job. Results strongly supported the authors' hypotheses, indicating that (a) when women are acknowledged to have been successful, they are less liked and more personally derogated than equivalently successful men (Studies 1 and 2); (b) these negative reactions occur only when the success is in an arena that is distinctly male in character (Study 2); and (c) being disliked can have career-affecting outcomes, both for overall evaluation and for recommendations concerning organizational reward allocation (Study 3). These results were taken to support the idea that gender stereotypes can prompt bias in evaluative judgments of women even when these women have proved themselves to be successful and demonstrated their competence. The distinction between prescriptive and descriptive aspects of gender stereotypes is considered, as well as the implications of prescriptive gender norms for women in work settings. (c) 2004 APA Show more