Does female leadership exist? And if so, what are its characteristics?
Leadership is the art of leading individuals, human beings, collectively or individually, towards a given goal, whatever it may be.. To get individuals to seek it, one can use persuasion or force. Traditionally, strength is a supposedly masculine quality, while persuasion is equated with feminine qualities. But this approach is a bit simple, even simplistic. Things get more complicated if we look at transpersonal psychology and gender identity. What is a man or a woman, or more generally masculine or feminine? Can gender identity be limited to physical appearance? And does physical appearance unconsciously impose a certain type of behavior? I don't think so. Things are more complex than they seem, and a leader, male or female, will only succeed in leading their teams if they are aware of the qualities they possess (or lack) in a given environment. And possessing certain qualities – supposedly masculine or feminine – is not, in my opinion, linked to gender, despite the stereotypes taught for a long time.
Clichés die hard. Many people believe this, whether out of convenience, fear, or a refusal to question the education they received. Thus, a woman is supposedly receptive, conciliatory, emotional—and woe betide anyone who strays from this ready-made image! Just as we oppose the emotional right brain to the rational left brain, we tend to oppose masculine and feminine behavior. We forget that everything is in everything, that we are made of duality and complementarity: we all carry so-called masculine or feminine traits, regardless of our physical appearance. And I doubt that these are qualities usually associated with women that come to mind for ordinary mortals when we talk about leaders such as Mrs. Thatcher or Mrs. Merkel. More and more often, I see men in my circle embracing the feminine qualities that make up their personalities, for example, by taking care of children as a caring mother would.
So, can we still talk about female leadership? ? I don't think so! In any case, it wouldn't be associated with values attributed to women because what struck me about all these women leaders I've met—business leaders, doctors, politicians—is that they shared the same characteristic: rigor. Rigor toward themselves, but also toward others. Now, if rigor is a strength, it is not necessarily accompanied by violence and does not necessarily express virility. Women leaders know how to establish a structuring framework where teams, even peoples, can act and organize themselves toward a given goal. They are "matrix-women." But there are also "matrix-men."
Rigor would therefore be a feminine quality.. I believe we all share it to varying degrees because it is essential for building trust. Rigor is necessary for both force-based and persuasion-based leadership. However, in a world like ours where the use of force has been transformed because it is increasingly poorly accepted, rigor is a quality that requires courage. Indeed, in a non-threatening environment, the easy option for the leader would be to trade rigor for seduction and compromise and therefore to resort to so-called feminine values. However, in my experience, women leaders resisted this temptation, which can be a political error because it can lead to a weak compromise.
So I don't think we can talk about female leadership.. Leadership qualities are not linked to a physical identity, even if the expression of these qualities can be influenced by this identity, since it is often simpler to act in accordance with what is expected of us. Besides, can leadership be learned? It is a posture that results from a set of predispositions mixing interest in others (more than in oneself), taste for risk (as opposed to the quest for security), but also a sense of collective, endurance, particularly in solitude, willpower, etc. This cocktail does not specifically relate to the feminine or the masculine, but to the very essence of a person and their experience.
The feminine or the masculine are therefore not linked to a physical aspect but are bearers of universal values to which it is very difficult to give a gender.
Elisabeth Carrio
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