Leading Ladies

Attention Michael Hayden: Here’s a thorough debunking of the notion that women are too “emotional” to be effective leaders:

A study recently published in the Journal of International Affairs suggested that female leadership may be advantageous in some conditions. The authors found that, in ethnically diverse countries, female leaders outperform their male counterparts in growing the gross domestic product, a measure of national economic progress. On average, having a female leader was associated with a 6% higher GDP growth rate than having a male leader.

A separate study described at the Harvard Business Review and MIT News found that teams perform better when they include more women. Author Thomas Malone commented:

“The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show, the more women, the better.” Coauthor Anita Woolley added, “We have early evidence that performance may flatten out at the extreme end—that there should be a little gender diversity rather than all women.”

Not only is female gender not incompatible with effective leadership, it appears that female representation may be advantageous. It should concern us then that Western countries have relatively low female representation in government. Out of 189 countries, the US ranks 83rd, with women comprising less than 20% of government. The UK is ranked 64th and Canada is 54th. Myths and stereotypes about females in leadership may contribute to this imbalanced representation and prevent government from functioning optimally.