Study reveals women excel in effective aspects of leadership

Samantha Paustian-Underdahl, a researcher and organizational expert in the Florida State University College of Business, led a comprehensive study that challenges long-held assumptions about gender and leadership effectiveness. 

The study, “Gender and Evaluations of Leadership Behaviors: A Meta-Analytic Review of 50 Years of Research,” published this fall in Leadership Quarterly, finds that women leaders consistently receive higher ratings than men across most effective leadership styles.

Paustian-Underdahl, the Mary Tilley Bessemer Associate Professor of Business Administration and Barry and Janice Anderson Director of the FSU Organizational Effectiveness Institute in FSU’s Department of Management, hailed the study as the product of 10 years of work with colleagues Caitlin E. Smith Sockbeson of Jacksonville University in Florida, Alison V. Hall of the University of Texas at Arlington and Cynthia Saldanha Halliday of the University of Texas at El Paso. 

Paustian-Underdahl said their research presents compelling evidence that women excel in all leadership approaches, not only nontraditional methods previously considered to appeal more to women.

"Our findings are pretty eye-opening,” she said. “We found that women are more likely than men to be evaluated as engaging in aspects of leadership that are more effective.”

The research team analyzed published and unpublished data from major databases, examining leadership evaluations across transformational, transactional, ethical, democratic and autocratic leadership styles. Over the five decades studied, management posts held by women have increased from 15% of all leaders nationwide to 40% today, plus 29% of senior management roles worldwide.

Surprisingly, Paustian-Underdahl said, men scored higher in only one category: passive management – a hands-off leadership approach generally considered less effective.

She said the findings challenge traditional stereotypes that typically associate men with task-oriented, or assertive, behaviors and women with relationship-focused, or communal, approaches. The study revealed that women leaders are rated higher not only in communal leadership aspects but also in effective assertive behaviors, such as providing contingent rewards and maintaining clear organizational structure.

Paustian-Underdahl argues that "we should expect this to translate to a female advantage in leadership" but that women remain underrepresented in leadership roles. She points out that only 7% of CEOs on the Standard and Poor's 1500 are women.

“Our study shows that women leaders are exhibiting the behaviors we want to see in good leaders,” she said. “I think we need more research to understand that if women are demonstrating these effective leadership styles and being recognized for it, why aren't they achieving the career outcomes we would expect?”