Ovidius University Annals: Economic Sciences Series (Jan 2018)
Women in Business Leadership
Abstract
Along time, it was considered that women lack leadership qualities. Nowadays, gender diversityin the business environment and, especially, in the top management has become an increasinglydiscussed and analyzed topic, especially in the Western countries. Among those who were concerned about this border between female and male leadership, Hofstede- who, in his attempt to identify specific aspects of organizational culture, defined masculinitybased on the more arrogant or more modest behavior of the individuals. According to him,"masculine" means a proud behavior having the tendency of showing self-inner qualities while"feminine" is a modest, temperamental behavior. Masculinity does not necessarily mean women's disadvantage, but rather the inequality betweenwomen and men. Although efforts have been made to diminish these gaps, statistics show that thereare still differences in the leading position employment for women, as compared to the number ofmen in leadership positions.