Women in Leadership This article is more than 10 years oldHow to beat the female leadership stereotypes
This article is more than 10 years oldMother or seductress, pet or battle-axe: 30 years after research first identified these roles we're still living by themA recent Gallup poll states that if given the choice between a male or female boss when taking a new job, Americans strongly lean towards men as their preferred choice. The figures highlight that issues with female authority have not gone away. The stereotype of the "horrible female boss" persists because expectations for women in power are set so high that it's nearly impossible for any human being to meet them.
The explanation is usually psychological: both women and men unconsciously view men as leaders and women as followers, so that when a woman is promoted to senior leadership, she disrupts unconscious collective norms.
Yet this unconscious bias must emanate from somewhere, and I suggest that this "somewhere" is rooted in the language we use to represent women and men.
We have been raised in a culture that has historically constructed successful leaders as male. The "great man" theory of leadership prevails in the western world heralding male leaders as heroic, charismatic, commanding, competitive, creative, cut-throat, masterful, and sometimes just plain quirky. Think Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, even Richard Branson or Mark Zuckerberg.
There is simply no room for women to fit into masculine archetypes of leadership. Female leaders are seen as the exception and often as socially and professionally deviant. Consequently, women get pigeonholed and labelled by narrow and limiting language. They become caricatures.
In 1983, American businesswoman Rosabeth Moss Kanter famously identified four "role traps" for women in the public domain: the pet, the mother, the battle-axe and the seductress. Today, if you look at the way women are represented in the media, these role traps heavily influence the way we see female leaders.
A woman falling into the pet role-trap is viewed as cute, sweet or girly. We all like her, she may be a favourite of the boss, but ultimately she is not seen as serious. Think Tory MP Louise Mensch, famously the pet of David Cameron before she fell from grace. A pet will rarely make it to the top of her chosen field.
The mother or schoolmistress is perhaps the most traditional leader role-trap. She is routinely described as school marmy, bossy, frumpy or mumsy. Think Fern Britton before her makeover on Strictly Come Dancing. The mother may command authority and respect but her manner is characterised as too arch, parental or humourless for serious leadership positions.
The seductress is disliked by both men and women, and gets described as a bitch, witch, cow, vamp or man-eater. Think MP Nadine Dorries or presenter Carol Vorderman. She eats men for breakfast and no boyfriend or husband is deemed safe. If she flirts with senior men, her behaviour is condemned as inappropriate, unprofessional, distracting and misjudged.
Finally, the most opprobrium is reserved for a woman who falls into the battle-axe role-trap. She has historical form in the tradition of Lady Macbeth or more recently, Margaret Thatcher. She is caricatured as scary, tough, mean, bossy, or just like a man. While she patently can make it to the top, she is then viewed as "a horrible female boss", although her reputation may be redeemed over time.
Can female leaders escape from these role-traps? Research I conducted in 14 multinational businesses compared seven women and seven male board directors chairing meetings with their senior teams. One notable finding from the research was that colleagues represented women leaders in stereotyped ways using words such as "scary", "tentative", "flirty" or "bossy". However, in my own observations, I saw senior women refusing to be entrapped by such monolithic stereotypes but rather, turning them to their advantage to be effective in the workplace.
I saw women leaders move skilfully between the four roles, using them as resources to draw on to achieve different business and political goals. Recent media representations of Angela Merkel, known by the Germans as "the Mother", depict her moving flexibly between the iron-fisted chancellor and the charming token female bantering with male heads of state.
But it is a dangerous game. Ultimately the fact that such role-traps continue to thrive in our collective unconscious, and are daily reconstructed in media representations, is a barrier for women. Now we have to ensure that such media representations are challenged, and to create multifaceted leadership archetypes for both women and men.
Professor Judith Baxter is professor of applied linguistics at Aston University. She researches the relationship between language, gender and leadership in educational, business and professional contexts.
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