Women and Leadership

Foundational conceptions of leadership have been concentrated on representatives in elected political office, executives at major companies, and those at the tops of various hierarchies, as well as the contexts in which they lead. These positions have been and continue to be held disproportionately by men. While scholars of leadership come from a variety of fields, including public administration, organizational behavior, and education, they nonetheless tend to focus on male-dominated institutions and notions of leadership exercised in these venues. Women’s gains in these institutions are real but also far from complete. Therefore, in the faces scholars identify as emblematic of leadership, as well as the venues to which they look to find such leadership, traditional definitions of leadership often ignore many of the ways in ...