Women,Political Power and Next Generation Leadership
By Rosemary Effiong       Newsdiaryonline      Thur July 14,2011

The evolution of thought about wome n and leadership is set against the background of feminist research and theory. The past content and scope of leadership and the dimensions that shaped it are compared with and contrasted to current concepts to determine ways to better prepare women for leadership in the future. Four interactive phases of perception and change are described to illuminate the forces continuing to keep women from contributing to leadership to their maximum potential. Empowerment strategies are denoted and processes and programs suggested assisting in developing leadership equity. The ongoing development of individuals to effectively lead in the global economy is a competitive advantage that contributes to national success. Countries must focus on developing both male and female employees to compete in this rapidly changing, turbulent new environment.  

Effective leadership and increasing diversity are central concerns in this present day profession. The attribute, knowledge, skills and dynamism of women in leadership position is not to be to ignored. Although male and female leaders have similar personal characteristics research suggests that female leaders influence the workplace differently from males and their leadership styles are a result of this difference. The socialization process of both males and females the workplace, thus act differently and vice versa- a circular process. Some school of thought  suggest that women enjoy working for other women and that having more women in leadership roles could inspire and help other women assert themselves. 

A study of women's management and leadership in education was a central research topic and the copious work published in many countries encompass various issues relating to gender and educational leadership. The study of female school principals from the Arab minority in Israel has only recently begun. This is a minority that lives mostly in separate settlements, distinguished from the majority Jewish population by their lifestyle and culture, in a society that can be described as developing. In-depth interviews were conducted with the seven female school principals, from different socio-cultural backgrounds, who had successfully climbed the professional ladder to senior positions in the Arab education system in Israel. Data-analysis addressed three areas: biographical background; the social and political aspects of the women's nomination to principalship; and the social and professional acceptance of the women as principals. Findings indicated that women principals contribute significantly to the development of Arab schools. As women in senior roles, the majority faces resistance; a change of societal norms and willingness to accept women's leadership would enable many more women to fill public roles and to contribute to their society's progress.

It is a myth in Nigeria and Africa generally that the place of a woman is in the kitchen. But the above statement is not completely true, in that the kitchen is not the only place in the house; it is the part of the house where food is prepared. It is the woman that prepares the food that men eat. Therefore, the place of the woman is from the kitchen to other parts of the house including the entire household and the entire society. A woman is the manager of the house, keep the home and looks after the children for proper up bring to enable them fit into the society and be good ambassadors of their respective countries, evidently, women deserve a unique place in the society.

This article briefly examines the myths which have historically relegated women to secondary positions of influence. With changing roles, relationships, and life styles, our current value system will have to be altered. Investigates the field of science to examine the neglect of its interrelationship with gender and how this weakness can be resolved. This write-up will also feature some women and the roles they play in nation building.

Margaret Hilda Thatcher (nee Roberts), later Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, the first woman to hold the position. Her leadership permanently moved Britain to the right and reshaped the nation's political environment to stress economic growth and international competitiveness. The Labour Party in response under Tony Blair jettisoned their old leftist ideas and followed Thatcher-lite programs.

Thatcher was chosen to be the leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975, succeeding former Prime Minister Edward Heath. She was opposed to socialism and out-of-control union power which had brought down the previous Conservative government in 1974. She led the Conservatives to victory in the May 1979 General Election and thus became Prime Minister.

Thatcher sold many of the nationalized industries back to private investors and made tax cuts. She broke the power of the trade unions which stood in the way of the rationalization of the coal industry and modernization of the newspaper industry. Due to her strong standards and her leadership style, she became known as the "Iron Lady," a term originally coined as an insult by the communist Soviet Union, but one she adopted. A famous statement of hers was that "the lady is not for turning", in reference to calls from within her own party to back down on issues that were important to her. Thatcher was always a strong supporter of the the United States, and was a good friend of President Ronald Reagan, uniting with him in actions against the Communists.

She led Britain to victory against Argentina in a 1982 war over sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. The United States was allied with both countries, and initially tried to broker a negotiated settlement. When that failed, the U.S. supported Britain with vital intelligence information. The conflict led to a strong friendship with the Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet after Chile helped Britain in the conflict.

 Thatcher led the Conservative Party to victory in three general elections (1979, 1983 and 1987). By 1990, her popularity was waning and there were calls from within her own party for her to step aside. She was challenged for the party leadership, and when it became clear to her that she would not have the necessary votes she decided not to stand for a second party vote in 1990. John Major won the party leadership vote, and was subsequently appointed to succeed Thatcher as Prime Minister.

Thatcher was the longest serving British Prime Minister in more than 150 years and, alongside Winston Churchill, considered to be one of the two most important British political leaders of the twentieth century.

She fundamentally moved the British economy from factories and mines to services and finance. Time Magazine wrote of Lady Thatcher:

She was the catalyst who set in motion a series of interconnected events that gave a revolutionary twist to the century's last two decades and helped mankind end the millennium on a note of hope and confidence. The triumph of capitalism, the almost universal acceptance of the market as indispensable to prosperity, the collapse of Soviet imperialism, the downsizing of the state on nearly every continent and in almost every country in the world — Margaret Thatcher played a part in all those transformations, and it is not easy to see how any would have occurred without her. Champion of free minds and markets, she helped topple the welfare state and make the President and Vice President At Odds on Big Issus

Farmers protesting tax increases on export goods went on strike in early 2008, causing highways to be shut down and severe food shortages nationwide. In July, after months of protests and strikes by the farmers, the government, led by Vice President Cobos, sided with the farmers and voted against the president's proposed increase on the agricultural export tax.

In November 2008, the lower house of Parliament approved President Fernandez's controversial plan to nationalize more than $25 billion in private pension funds. President Fernandez asserted the move would protect pensioners' assets during the global financial crisis, while Vice President Cobos continued to disagree, stating it would create doubts among investors about Argentina's investment market stability.

The dispute over the Falkland Islands between Argentina and the UK resurfaced in February 2010 when a British oil rig began drilling near the islands. Both countries still claim sovereignty over the Falklands, and Argentina was outraged that it may have to confront the embarrassing fact that England could tap vast deposits of oil so close to its shores. Argentina responded by threatening to implement new restrictions on British ships passing through its waters.

In a Nov. 2005 presidential runoff election, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist who had worked at the World Bank, defeated George Weah, a former world-class soccer star. In Jan. 2006 she became Africa's first female president. Till date ,she is till contributing to Liberial rebuilding and development.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo President of the Philippines the Daughter of the late Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal, Macapagal-Arroyo graduated from Assumption College in the Philippines, holds a master’s degree in economics from Ateneo de Manila University, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of the Philippines. After teaching economics, Macapagal-Arroyo became former President Corazon Aquino’s Undersecretary of Trade and Industry. She was elected senator in 1992, winning re-election in 1995 in a landslide. In 1998 Macapagal-Arroyo easily won the vice presidency. She assumed the presidency in January 2001 when street demonstrations forced Joseph Estrada, who faced serious corruption allegations, from office.

In Nigeria, women constitute more than 30% of the population, but they are not adequately represented in decision-making capacity. Currently women constitute about 29% on the ministerial list sent to the Senate by the President; less than 5.5% of the National Assembly and at the state level between 8-20%. This is comparatively lower than progress recorded in some African countries such as Rwanda, South Africa among others; This is far below 30% affirmative action benchmark set as the global minimum critical mass required to enhance gender mainstreaming in governance. This low percentage of women participation in National affairs should be improved upon to grantee next generation leadership.  

Women participation in socio-economic and political activities will help to stimulate her career objective positively, and fast- track social changes in her immediate community and the society at large, to assist empower women and youths in Nigeria and around the world by year 2020; and would generate a strong influence among professional colleagues.

Look around and you would be shocked by the growing number of Nigerian women that have become employers of labour (especially male labour) as well as those that have become managing and executive directors of multinational banks and oil companies. 

Let's face it: our daughters, sisters and mothers are no longer mere baby factories, dishwashers, laundry women and glorified housemaids that we can nickname housewives. The educated, enterprising and evolving Nigerian woman can no longer be consigned to our bedrooms and kitchens.

The reality is that they want to be and ought to be given equal opportunities to do the same things with the men gender. They want to rule where men have misruled, govern where other sex have misgoverned, be lawyers where men have mishandled trials and be judges where they have misjudged.

But the point is this: the Nigerian woman has evolved, and only uninformed men would want to deny that fact women could do certain thing better than they. It is important, to note that only men who have inferiority complex and who are scared that given a chance, a woman would do better at the roles play or in the offices they hold that try too hard to war against women!"

The Ex-President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, one thing that will stand him out in the annals of Nigeria is the fact that he rent the political veil in two by allowing women into the centre of an otherwise male-dominated playing field.

For the Nigerian woman, it has been a new dawn since the ObsanJo era, and what a good account they have given of themselves; Oby Ezekwesili, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, Dora Akunyili, etc have all walked tall and proud where their counter part had hitherto "feared to tread. They were competent and effective, and they made Nigeria very proud.

There are several key ways in which people respond differently to women and men who are leaders.  I’ll outline these differences, identify the ways in which such responses affect women’s leadership, and propose some solutions to smooth the way for women leaders.

The United States recently traveled quite a way down the road toward electing its first woman president. Yet, incongruously, as the Hillary Clinton campaign picked up speed, an inordinate amount of attention was paid to a frivolous observation about the “low-cut” neckline of an outfit worn during a speech she gave on the Senate floor. As the first primaries approached, her campaign scrambled to embark on a blitz to present her as “likable and heartwarming,” to balance the “strength and experience” theme that had seemed especially necessary for a female candidate.

It appears that the acceptable scripts for women in powerful public political roles are still rigidly defined and easy to violate—by being too “pushy” or too “soft,” too “strident” or too accommodating, too sexless or too sexual. It seems all too easy for women leaders to run afoul of their constituents or their colleagues by deviating from the narrowly-defined set of behaviors in which cultural femininity overlaps with leadership. A synergistic model of leadership would probably be most efficient, one that encompasses a continuum or balance of both male and female strengths.

With the necessity to conform to two, often conflicting, sets of expectations, high-profile women leaders in the United States are relentlessly held to a higher standard than their male counterparts. If women are to claim their share of leadership positions, and to operate effectively within such positions, women and men must be aware of these differential expectations, know how they affect both leaders and constituents, and understand what responses may be useful. This bring us to story of Dr. Mrs. Sarah Jibril of the People Democratic Party after more than three attempt from other platform to service in the highest office of the land proofed abortive. What is next?

Women in leadership roles elicit different responses than do men.

Power operates as a social structure, made up of numerous practices that maintain a cultural system of dominance. The practices that maintain a power system include patterns of discourse, shared understandings about and participation in a set of values, expectations, norms and roles. This social structure transcends, in some respects, the wishes or behavior of any particular individual and has a tendency to shape decisions, interactions, and social relations to fit it. Responses to women and men in leadership roles are conditioned by a social structure traditionally dominated by men.

Researchers have identified four key ways in which female and male leaders elicit different responses from those around them.  These different responses appear to be due, not so much to different leadership behaviors by women and men, as to the stimulus value of women or men in these roles. A woman leader stimulates a different reaction than a male leader because of learned expectations, shaped and supported by the surrounding social structure, that invalidate and undercut women’s attempts to be effective, influential, and powerful.

Women are expected to combine leadership with compassion.

Researchers have long found that people think “male” when they think “leader,” and that this result transcends many cultural differences. Because of perceived incompatibility between the requirements of femininity and those of leadership, women are often required to “soften” their leadership styles to gain the approval of their constituents. Women who do not temper their agency and competence with warmth and friendliness risk being disliked and less influential; men face no such necessity to be agreeable while exercising power. Women who lead with an autocratic style are the targets of more disapproval than those who enact a more democratic style; men may choose the autocratic style with relative impunity, if they are effective leaders. When women demonstrate competent leadership within an explicitly masculine arena—something that often requires the application of a “harder” leadership style, they are disliked and disparaged.

People do not listen to or take direction from women as comfortably as from men.

The stereotype that women are more talkative than men is unsupported by evidence. Yet it often appears that people use women’s supposed loquaciousness as a justification for “tuning out” much of what women say. Women report that they do not feel listened to, that when they speak in meetings their comments and suggestions are ignored or belittled—and that the same comments or suggestions from men have more impact.  They are not imagining this reaction.  One pair of researchers trained women and men to try to take leadership of mixed-sex groups by making the same suggestions, using the same words.  Group members responded to the male would-be leaders’ comments with attention, nods, and smiles; they responded to the women by looking away and frowning.  Furthermore, these group members were not aware that they were treating would-be female and male leaders differently. This pattern occurs not only in the lab, but in the real world:  Field studies of small group meetings in organizations show that women leaders are targets of more displays of negative emotion than men leaders, even when both sets of leaders are viewed as equally competent.

Women who promote themselves and their abilities reap disapproval.

Because they are stereotyped as less competent than men, women would-be leaders are sometimes advised to eschew feminine modesty and promote their own abilities, strengths and accomplishments.  However, self-promotion can be dangerous for women.  As noted above, women who act more confident and assertive than is normative for women run the risk of disapproval.  Research demonstrates that when women promote their own accomplishments it can cause their audience to view them as more competent—but at the cost of viewing them as less likeable.  Men who promote their own accomplishments do not reap the same mixed outcomes:  as long as they do not overdo it, self-promotion brings them both higher evaluations of competence and likeability.

Women require more external validation than do men in some contexts.

Given the issues raised so far, it is not surprising to learn that, in order for women to be accepted in leadership roles, they must often have external endorsements.  Particularly in competitive, highly-masculinized contexts, simply having leadership training or task-related expertise does not guarantee a woman’s success unless accompanied by legitimation by another established leader.Gender stereotypes interfere with observers’ ability to see women’s competence; it is sometimes necessary to for a high-status other to provide them with credibility.

Reacting to the reactions:  How does leadership feel to women?

There is evidence that women may be more aware than men of the potential costs of leadership. Women do worry about the contradictions between acceptable feminine behavior and the requirements of powerful positions.  Young women asked to imagine themselves in powerful positions rate such positions as be less positive than young men do.  Furthermore, the women betray awareness of the possibility that relationship problems could ensue if they were to hold such positions. Some describe themselves as potentially very unlikable in such roles, using words such as “dominating, aggressive,” “opinionated,” “power hungry, ... mean,” “bossy, direct and aggressive.”Clearly, they recognize the near-impossibility of “softening” one’s image while yet maintaining the air of authority, determination and competence necessary to convince others that one can exercise strong leadership.

Women already in leadership positions—even those in male-dominated contexts—while acutely aware of the narrow path they must tread, find rewards in these roles:  a sense of competence and of positive impact and the opportunity to empower others. These rewards, they say, help compensate for the heavy demands and the caution demanded by the contradictory expectations associated with their leadership roles.  However, there is no telling how many women never get to this point—turned away from aspirations to leadership because of the difficulties and costs they anticipate.

A changed social structure changes the reactions.

An interview study of women leaders in France and Norway illustrated years ago that context could make all the difference to these leaders’ experience. The Norwegian women expressed joy and a sense of efficacy in their leadership roles; the French women, on the other hand, spoke of difficulties, conflicts, loneliness, and marginality. These differing experiences appeared linked to sharp contrasts in these women’s perceptions of their acceptance as leaders.  In Norway, with its long and deeply-rooted history of women’s involvement in political leadership, women in such positions felt a strong sense of legitimacy in their leadership roles.  In France, where women’s leadership was relatively new and rare, that sense of legitimacy was absent, and women were called upon to prove themselves repeatedly.

Research has since made it abundantly clear that context makes a critical difference in the ease with which women can access leadership positions, their perceived effectiveness in these positions, and the difficulties they encounter.  Women face the most resistance to their leadership and influence in roles that are male-dominated and characterized as masculine.As social attitudes have shifted to define fewer arenas as masculine, acceptance of women as leaders in the other arenas has grown..

Women have breeched the barriers to such positions in concert with a general relaxation in traditional gender-role attitudes as well as changes in public perceptions of what leadership entails. Yet in contexts (such as military command, high corporate office, the presidency) still defined in the public mind as requiring masculine qualities, women face tough barriers stemming from the difficulty of simultaneously transcending and accommodating to gender stereotypes.  Our intellectual understanding of these barriers notwithstanding, the only way to break them down is for the first few clever, determined and thick-skinned women to dance, tip-toe, and kick their way through them.

There are ways for both organizations and individuals to support these women, and thus support progress toward a social structure in which women’s leadership is commonplace even in contexts currently defined as masculine.  Organizations can strive to avoid isolating women as tokens in male-dominated departments, where their gender becomes the defacto explanation for any perceived misstep.  Established leaders can endorse and legitimate women who seek or attain leadership roles. Opinion leaders such as journalists can cultivate sensitivity to the possibility that they are setting different standards of likeability and other interpersonal qualities when they publicly critique male and female leaders.  As individuals, we can examine our own criticisms of women leaders for telltale signs that we are expecting the impossible—imposing the double-bind of contradictory expectations.

As first one, then a trickle of women overcome the barriers, it should finally become normal to see women holding leadership roles in contexts currently considered masculine.  That very “normalcy” will moderate public perceptions of gender and of leadership, gently re-shaping the social structure that has conditioned these perceptions.  The significant changes in women’s access to leadership roles over the past few decades are a necessary, but still insufficient, prelude to a society in which women and men can claim a fair share of the challenges and opportunities associated with leadership. The more women in leadership roles could inspire and help other women assert themselves.

Rosemary Effiong A

E-Mail: rosemaryeffiong@ymail.com

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