Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Change (review)

After identifying their central concern—the persistent underrepresentation of women leaders, particularly within “the most influential leadership hierarchies” (p. 2)—Barbara Kellerman and Deborah L. Rhode summarize a range of circumstantial, environmental, and structural factors that limit women’s access to leadership opportunities and explore individual, organizational, and societal strategies for change. The book’s four sections proceed from a disproportionate focus on problems and barriers to later emphases on problem reconceptualizations and change strategies.

Part 1, “Gender Differences and Stereotypes,” covers familiar but important material grounded in traditional White, Western, heterosexual, and upper-to-middle-class gender role stereotypes and leadership traits and styles often associated with women and men. The various chapter authors explore troubling implications of analyses that preserve normative and gendered constructions of leadership by polarizing, complementing, reconciling, or balancing these traits and styles.

In Chapter 1, Nannerl O. Keohane explored conceptions of men’s and women’s leadership styles and cautioned against using gender as shorthand to signify collections of leadership traits and styles. She emphasized—as do Todd L. Pittinsky, Laura M. Bacon, and Brian Welle in Chapter 2—outcomes such as infrastructure functionality and goal achievement.

Linda L. Carli and Alice H. Eagly in Chapter 3 identify the focus on gender and leadership style as one enabler of resistance to women leaders, and Rosalind Chait Barnett in Chapter 4 notes that presumptions of an over-arching “natural order” provide a readily available yet normatively constrained filter for ascertaining women’s suitabilities to leadership. In Chapter 5, Anita F. Hill draws on feminist legal theory and her “representative perspective frame” to argue for broader representativeness in judicial appointments.

Part 2, “Leadership in Context: Women and Politics,” focuses on elective politics and governance. In Chapter 6 (one of two chapters focusing heavily on non-U.S. contexts, yet in this case linked to the United States through current military operations), Pippa Norris examines fast-track mechanisms for ensuring measures of women’s participation within Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s new legislative bodies.

Orvoe Dahlerup’s Chapter 7 analyzes outcomes of gender quota systems in a number of countries in light of individual contexts, desired aims, and associated critiques. Richard L. Fox describes factors surrounding U.S. women’s (on average, lower than men’s, although the gap is narrowing) interest in elective office. Marie C. Wilson in Chapter 9 identifies the presence of more women in highly visible elected or appointed positions as well as the growing effectiveness of women’s political groups as key factors in pursuing gender parity.

Finally, Ruth B. Mandel’s Chapter 10 traces the history of women U.S. presidential candidates and trends in voter attitudes, culminating with an analysis of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political career and presidential aspirations.

Part 3, “Leadership Redefined: Authority, Authenticity, and Power,” continues to emphasize change strategies. In Chapter 11, Ronald A. Heifetz reframes leadership as “developing the adaptive capacity of others” (p. 321) rather than accumulating authority, power, and influence. Using narrative profiles of women leaders, Laura Morgan Roberts emphasizes authenticity as a defining characteristic of leaders, their engagements, and their expressions.

In Chapter 13, Evangelina Holvino uses a variety of analytical lenses to examine notions of power and recommends that women broaden their power repertoires and abilities to marshal and adroitly select from the multiple available perspectives. After summarizing pitfalls often faced by women leaders of corporations, Katherine Giscombe in Chapter 14 endorses combinations of individual and collective educational and accountability strategies for reducing bias and fostering women’s success.

Part 4, “Redefining the Problem, Recasting the Solutions,” emphasizes organizational and structural changes. For example, rather than indicting professional women who leave paid employment temporarily to concentrate on family caregiving, Sylvia Ann Hewlett described the talent loss accountable to insufficient work accommodations for women seeking to resume their careers. “Ideal” workers unencumbered by outside responsibilities (Acker, 1990) tend to be...