Advancing Female Corporate Leadership: A Comparative Analysis of Female Versus Male Leadership Behaviour in India

Abstract

This article investigates whether women managers possess any specific leadership attributes which will enable them to be promoted to leadership positions on merit grounds. It also examines whether women encounter barriers, which impede their progress to the top. Data for our study were collected from a sample of 372 managers in leadership positions across India, half of whom were women and the other half were men. The survey was done through the administration of a 21-item questionnaire developed by the authors. Through the application of decision tree analysis, logistic regression analysis and discriminant analysis, we arrived at findings that have reasonable predictive accuracy. Our results suggest that women managers in leadership positions are significantly more likely to get reticent team members to participate at meetings than their male counterparts. This is our principal finding. This is significant, given that contemporary leadership emphasizes inclusivity and distributed leadership. This is because, as our data shows, while women managers are as good as men, they additionally possess an attribute which makes them better suited than men as leaders. Another finding is that many women leaders differ from men in that they often struggle with work–life balance challenges. The suggestion is that companies could offer more options to women to achieve work–life balance. The third finding is that women leaders are perceived as more empathetic than men. The implication is that all of these constitute business arguments favouring organizational support for competent women managers advancing to leadership positions. Data are from India, focussing on Indian managerial leadership.