Times of crisis: women and leadership

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated that countries with greater women’s rights and support for female leadership exhibit more socially progressive policies and competencies when managing crisis. Throughout this tumultuous time, headlines celebrating the success of female leaders’ abilities to manage the spread of Covid-19 dominated popular media prompting a reexamination of gender and leadership during times of crisis. Unique to times of crisis, those traits associated with femininity are welcomed and deemed appropriate by communities and corporations alike and are associated with strong leadership abilities. At a time when the likelihood of failure is heightened, women are often promoted into leadership positions (glass cliff). This suggests that they are being set up to fail. Whether the act of setting women up for failure is true or an unconscious gender bias, it must not be assumed that female leaders are ill equipped for the task at hand nor are they naively accepting these fallible roles. Women show a natural tendency for transformational leadership which means they have the ability to lead with empathy and integrity and inspire followers to act selflessly for the greater good. These are the very traits that are appropriately suited for leadership roles during crises. This ability to understand followers’ needs at a deeper level and act accordingly explains actions that female transformational leaders have made. The barriers in place preventing the rise of women into higher-level leadership positions in business are based on outdated concepts of gender roles. They are not based on merit. Further research needs to investigate the effectiveness of women in leadership roles during crisis situations.