Are women leaders breaking the gender-stereotype? A study on emerging androgynous leadership style among women in the context of globalization

As an emerging market, India is yet to fully utilise its women talent pool effectively. India still continues to be a gender-stereotyped nation, especially in leadership roles. The aim of this study is to break the gender-stereotyping with regard to leadership. For that, the researchers try to bring the importance of the emerging androgynous leadership style among women and substantiate it by a sample study. This research tries to check the relationship between leadership effectiveness and the androgynous orientation of professional women in lower and middle leadership positions. The study aims to expand the empirical evidences of emerging androgynous leadership style of women in India.

The study was conducted among 43 women professionals, who were in lower and middle leadership roles in the state of Kerala in India. The sample consists of doctors, teachers and managers. We used two standardised psychometric tools to capture the androgynous orientation and the leadership effectiveness scores.These scores were then analysed using SPSS 17 for correlation.

It was found that majority of women who took part in the study had an androgynous orientation and also had an effective leadership style. A weak-moderate, but significant correlation was found between the androgyny score and the leadership effectiveness scores.

A higher sample size could have improved the correlation coefficient. Since the focus was to check to female psyche with regard to leadership roles, the study was done only among women.The study could be replicated among men to check their androgynous nature as well as leadership profile, which could give a balanced outlook for the subject. Also the study could be replicated among women in other professions than the ones in this study.

This paper has tried to deal into the major issues behind the non-representation of women in top leadership roles and found that among the sample, gender stereotyping is the major probable cause, as the potential for effective leadership clearly exists. In this scenario, the authors propose the necessity for serious actions in this area by the Indian corporate. Similarly, the paper also tries to bring forth the necessity for training women employees in developing an androgynous orientation as it could be one way to bring out their actual leadership potential. Organisations and Educational Institutions could consider this matter in future decisions in this area.

The paper brings empirical evidence on the emerging androgynous leadership style of women leaders in the Indian context, which is an under researched area.