Do Women Want to Lead? Gender Differences in Motivation and Values

Abstract

This paper considers the impact of gender differences in motivation and values on women's participation in management and senior executive roles, together with the extent to which women who do attain these roles resemble their male peers in terms of their motives and values. The results of a large, quantitative study using the Hogan Motives, Values and Preferences inventory (N = 7571) are presented. These indicate that women do differ significantly from their male peers on 9 out of 10 motive and value scales but that the differences between senior women and their non-managerial female colleagues are less than those between senior men and their non-managerial male colleagues. As a result, key gender differences increase rather than decreasing at senior levels.

Sex differences in political leadership in an egalitarian society

“…We did not directly measure women’s or men’s motivation to acquire overt political leadership. Across disparate cultures and samples, men are more likely than women to value power (Schwartz and Rubel, 2005; Schuh et al, 2014; Davies et al, 2017). As with sex differences in cooperation, power valuation by sex may result from sexually selected social strategies, the sexual division of labor, and reinforcement of the latter by gender discrimination.…”

The Bottleneck Metaphor of Leadership Culture: How Shared Understandings About Leadership Develop in Groups and Impede Diversity and Effectiveness of Leaders

“…On the more macro levels, universal and national leadership cultures can encourage specific categories of individuals (Epitropaki, 2018) to aspire for leadership positions more than others (Davies et al, 2017;Badura et al, 2020). They can also intimidate certain groups of candidates.…”

Analysis of the motivation policy from a gender perspective

“…En este trabajo proponemos ir un paso más allá usando la lógica borrosa (Zadeh, 1965), que permite adaptar el modelo de medida a la realidad propia de los recursos humanos de la organización incorporando la incertidumbre y subjetividad en las respuestas. En adición, existe una carencia de instrumentos de medida de la motivación que incoporen la perspectiva de género en su diseño y en la obtención de resultados, aun sabiendo que los factores motivadores preferidos por las mujeres son, por regla general, diferentes a los preferidos por los hombres (Davies et al, 2017;Folbre, 2012;Kirkwood, 2009;Lindz, 2004). En la herramienta mostrada en este trabajo incluimos la perspectiva de género tanto en su diseño como en el análisis de datos y la discusión de resultados.…”