women in leadership positions

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Women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions in the public and private sector. Many countries have responded to this issue by implementing gender quotas for political seats and corporate boardroom positions. This paper reviews the stereotype beliefs that women leaders are faced with which serve as barriers for the attainment of high-power leadership positions. There is incomplete information on the identification of qualified women leaders and thus most likely the persistence of the stereotypes against women leaders. Greater exposure to qualified women leaders would reduce the gender bias and provide them with greater access to high-power leadership positions. Studies in France, the United Kingdom, and Argentina demonstrate that quotas increase female leadership and influence policy outcomes. Pros and cons to the implementation of mandatory gender quotas for publically listed companies in the United States are identified. Due to the relatively new initiatives of gender equality through quotas, longer-term effects are still to be determined.

Heidi Roizen is a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, current Venture Partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and member of the board of directors for five different companies (heidiroizen.com, 2014). While her merits alone are enough to justify the attention her name brings, her name is frequently mentioned for another reason – the Heidi Howard case. The Harvard Business School wrote a case study about entrepreneur Heidi Roizen consisting of an interview dialogue discussing her personal life and development as well as her professional success. Flynn (2005) took this case a step further by changing one simple thing, the name from Heidi to Howard. He found that while students r...

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...ntic (Elsesser and Lever, 2011).
Meanwhile, men continue to be provided with greater access to leadership roles than women. Given that the majority of the incumbent leaders are men, if the evaluators do not have previous exposure to competent women leaders, they may have a harder time choosing females of equal background and experience over their male counterparts. This perpetuates the cycle of men continuing to dominate the upper management positions, and leadership being equated with stereotypical masculinity. Women have to be more highly qualified than men to obtain the same roles (Eagly, 2007).
There is no doubt that women face a significant disadvantage in the top leadership positions. Women in leadership positions are faced with many obstacles for achieving professional success including conflicting gender roles, social backlash, and limited opportunities.

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