Gender: Gender Stereotypes, And Gender Stereotypes

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Gender
The most prominent cause indicated by the literature for women’s leadership gap is the gender stereotype. A stereotype is a prejudice as a simplified description about their qualities and characteristics applied to every person in some category (Gray, 2010). Hence, gender stereotypes are simplified descriptions regarding the attributes of men and women. These can be divided into two groups: descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes. Descriptive gender stereotypes portray what women and men are like, whereas prescriptive gender stereotypes portray what women and men should be like (Heilman, 2012).
Descriptive gender stereotypes. Literature regarding the descriptive gender stereotype is primarily focussed on the female gender stereotype and its complications. One of the most prominent theories, the Social Role Theory by Eagly (1987) states that women are expected to be communal whereas the defining characteristic for males is agency. Communal attributes describe a …show more content…

Bass and Avolio (1990) identified four dimensions of transformational leadership: the first one being idealized influence: hence the degree of inspirational behaviour that causes subordinates to identify with the leader. Secondly, inspirational motivation that encompasses the degree of inspiration subordinates gain from their leader’s vision. Thirdly, intellectual stimulation is the degree to which a leader encourages followers’ creativity. The last dimension, individualized consideration, describes the degree to which the leader coaches and listens to the subordinate. Bass (1985) claimed that transformational leaders are more effective than transactional leadership, as it increases followers’ confidence and causes higher motivation and higher organizational performance accordingly. The positive relation between transformational leadership and OCB has been supported empirically (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, &

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