Differences In Gender Leadership Style
INTRODUCTION
In the last few decades, the number of women entering managerial roles has been steadily increasing in Canada. This purports to the fact that men, who historically held all managerial positions, will increasingly face competition with their female counterparts in the rivalry to obtain leadership roles. As a result, the topics of women, management and leadership style have stimulated great interest among researchers. In particular, literature demonstrates a growing interest on the issue of whether men and women behave differently in leadership roles (Statham, 1987; Pounder & Coleman, 2002; Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001; Carless, 1998; Burke & Collins, 2001; Davidson & Ferrario, 1992; Park, 1996; Van Engen, Van der Leeden & Willemsen, 2001; Eagly & Johnson, 1990; Powell & Graves, 2003). Within this literature of research, there has been substantial divergence in the opinions of the gender-leadership debate. While some researchers exploring gender disparities found a lack of support for the notion that women and men utilize different leadership styles (Van Eagen, Van der Leeden & Willemsen, 2001; Pounder & Coleman, 2002), a considerable amount of research suggests that there are definite differences in leadership styles employed by males and females (Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001;
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