Abstract The theories of leadership seldom explain the difference of male leaders and female leaders. Instead of the assumption that the leaders¡¦ leading traits and leading styles of two sexes are the same, most studies work from the ¡§man¡¨ point of view. Traditionally, the principles and theories of leadership in most cases come from the researches written by male leaders. Many female leaders¡¦ leadership styles are ignored or forgotten. (Sally Helgsen, 1995) General thoughts indicated that there are some differences between male and female, but these differences are seldom used to explain leadership. The master stream of leadership theories still infers female¡¦s leadership by male traits. This research considers that once woman accept the inequality is unfair, then they can create the possibility in working field. As the saying of Peter Senge goes ¡§Remove the unwanted doesn¡¦t mean you can get what you want¡¨. This research wants to draw a picture of real female leaders by finding ¡§What You Want¡¨, focusing on female leaders¡¦ successful leadership traits and leadership styles, then to discuss how they overcome ¡§the Unwanted¡¨. This research adopted case study and in-depth interview methods. After interviewing six female leaders, this research has conclusions listed below: 1. Female leader¡¦s traits: Female leaders not only lead people to achieve the goal of organizations, but also want to make them improve themselves. The female leaders emphasize ex-birth learning even more than pro-birth gift. It is an everlasting improving process. The female leaders who have strong motivation know they should try hard to hold on every chance, but the others must wait the inspiration by environment or other people. 2. Female leaders¡¦ leadership style: Female leaders adapt Y theory to make the attributed assumption of employees, but they would transfer to X theory because of changes of environment and so on. They mainly use democratic leadership style and supply with authoritative and laissez faire styles. They try to achieve the balance of employee-oriented and work-oriented. This research discovered that female leaders usually adapt the neutral characteristics or integrate the characteristics of two sexes in leading process. 3. Female leaders and sex issue: This research shows the notion of female leaders that leaders contain those of two sexes, but they should not be separated into two nouns: male leaders and female leaders. This research discovered that all female leaders never benefit from being a female. The dilemmas they face are: challenging the stereotype and the conflict of family and job roles. The ways they treat to male and female employees have no significant differences, and they respect their differences. When it comes to promotion, they never think about the issue of sex. 4. The working philosophy of female leaders: The most important three factors of their job philosophies are interests, mission and self-actualization. Surprisingly, the working hours of female leaders in case study are all very long. Five out of six leaders work for twelve to fifteen hours or even more a day.

The scarcity of female leaders rise curiosity to explore the reasons of the phenomenon. Many attempts have been done to explain the scarcity but somehow it seems that investigations explore the same factors and not what has been seen as a taboo; women’s feelings and thoughts towards each other as obstacles in making careers. Therefore is the aim of this study: to gain knowledge about women’s feelings and thoughts about other women in a corporate environment to be able to draw conclusions whether this matter can be a contribution to the debate concerning obstacles for women to climb in their career. This research is conducted through an inductive approach with eight qualitative interviews choosing both women leaders and non-leaders. Jealousy and envy between women were discovered, which do not seem to restrain or create obstacles for other women but only or mostly, to women having these feelings and thoughts. Jealousy and envy are just a symptom of the real problem which is poor selfconfidence in the corporate environment. We discovered a vicious circle which shows us the connection between jealousy, self-confidence, competition and success. The vicious circle could be an input to the debate to explain obstacles that women could meet in their path to leading positions. Women have to start believing in themselves with help of society where she is not directly or indirectly restrained for the fact of being a woman.

<p>The scarcity of female leaders rise curiosity to explore the reasons of the phenomenon. Many attempts have been done to explain the scarcity but somehow it seems that investigations explore the same factors and not what has been seen as a taboo; women’s feelings and thoughts towards each other as obstacles in making careers. Therefore is the aim of this study: to gain knowledge about women’s feelings and thoughts about other women in a corporate environment to be able to draw conclusions whether this matter can be a contribution to the debate concerning obstacles for women to climb in their career.</p><p>This research is conducted through an inductive approach with eight qualitative interviews choosing both women leaders and non-leaders. Jealousy and envy between women were discovered, which do not seem to restrain or create obstacles for other women but only or mostly, to women having these feelings and thoughts. Jealousy and envy are just a symptom of the real problem which is poor selfconfidence in the corporate environment. We discovered a vicious circle which shows us the connection between jealousy, self-confidence, competition and success. The vicious circle could be an input to the debate to explain obstacles that women could meet in their path to leading positions.</p><p>Women have to start believing in themselves with help of society where she is not directly or indirectly restrained for the fact of being a woman.</p>

This psychobiography used the framework of Individual Psychology to examine the life style development of the Honorable Ann Richards in order to provide insight into the creation of a life style by a successful, contemporary female leader. This single case study utilized a qualitative/phenomenological research methodology to examine from Ms. Richards' point of view the manner in which a highly visible and well-known individual created her particular style of life.

Throughout history women have been excluded from leading positions. Today, however, there is an equal gender distribution among Swedish managers, which by some is seen as a result of the Nordic model. Despite this, current statistics show that women tend to have a greater responsibility over child rearing and household duties. The aim of this study is to examine female leaders’ experiences of combining family and career, the challenges they face, and if these differ from male leaders. Previous research on women’s work commitment has shown that mothers are not less committed to their careers than women without children. At the same time other studies show that working mothers feel guilty over not being good enough parents. This study is based on eight qualitative interviews with female and male leaders in Sweden. The study shows that the female participants face challenges to their careers because of traditional gender norms, however these norms do not disfavour the male participants. This study also illustrates that the female subjects meet greater expectations both in their roles as leaders as well as in their roles as parents. Gender norms regarding motherhood result in that the women are made to feel guilty if traditional expectations go unmet. This is not something experienced by any of the male participants.

Kvinnliga chefer sitter i en minoritetsställning eftersom det fortfarande är mest män som är chefer (Bohlin, 2006). Könsfördelningen i byggbranschen är 4 % för kvinnor och 96 % för män (SCB, 2010). Det finns starka skäl att tro att kvinnor inte har en plats i byggbranschen eftersom kvinnorna är ett andrahandsval. När det är högkonjunktur och brist på arbetskraft rekryteras kvinnor men annars anses byggyrkena för tunga, trots att fysisk styrka inte krävs inom vissa befattningar. Dessutom finns en manlig jargong som hindrar kvinnorna att komma in i branschen (Olofsson, 2000). Gary Yukl (2002) har identifierat och delat upp ledarskap i olika förhållningssätt, ett av dessa är egenskapsperspektivet som säger att en del människor är naturliga ledare och har särskilda egenskaper. Detta med fokus på ledarens personliga egenskaper. Litteraturen diskuterar kvinnliga ledarstilar men det finns inga studier som visar om män och kvinnor använder sina egenskaper på olika sätt trots deras olika socialisering (Isaac, Behar-Horenstein, Koro-Ljungberg, 2009). Eftersom det inte finns några studier om kvinnor och män använder sina egenskaper på olika sätt vill vi utreda vilka dessa är och hur de skiljer sig åt i ledarskapet. Trots alla hinder finns det kvinnor som lyckats och har ledarpositioner inom byggbranschen. Vi vill ta reda på vilka egenskaper dessa kvinnor har som ledare i en väldigt mansdominerad bransch. Vår frågeformulering för uppsatsen är: Vilka egenskaper präglas en kvinnas ledarskap i byggbransch av? Syftet med vår studie är att se hur kvinnliga ledare uppfattar kvinnligt ledarskap och deras egenskaper inom en mansdominerad bransch som byggbranschen. För att uppfylla vårt syfte har vi använt oss av en kvalitativ metod med deduktiv ansats. Fyra olika respondenter i byggbranschen har intervjuats där alla fyra var kvinnor i ledande positioner. Intervjufrågor som vi ställde var formulerade utefter vår teoretiska referensram. Det vi har kommit fram till genom vår studie är att det finns egenskaper som präglar en kvinnas ledarskap inom byggbranschen. Vi har även kommit fram till att det finns en del hinder och därför är det viktigt att vara anpassningsbar. Vårt bidrag med denna studie är att visa vilka egenskaper som kvinnor har, samt att vi vill visa att kvinnor har en plats som ledare i byggbranschen.

Title: Female leaders within the bank sector.   Level: D-level in Business   Author: Emma Roos &amp; Fanny Wiklander   Supervisor: Maria Fregidou-Malama   Date: 2011 – January   Aim: The aim of this study is to examine which factors are behind the low number of female leaders compared to male leaders within the bank sector.   Method: We have adapted a qualitative method. This means that the researcher works close to the object of research and tries to understand it. We believe that this is a suitable method for our study since it’s based on seven personal interviews. Moreover, we have studied existing theories about the subject and connected these theories with the empirical chapter in order to draw conclusions.      Result &amp; Conclusions: Our study shows three main reasons that might explain why there are more male than female leaders within the bank sector. They are; women’s inability to show what they can do and to take risks, the heavy responsibility for home and family that is put on women and also that the traditional image of the male boss still exists. We think that a fundamental change in the way women’s role is regarded is necessary, both in society and in companies. To do this there need to be awareness about the problem and it needs to be up for discussion all the time as long as the inequalities remain. We believe that mentorship can be a useful tool for women who want to advance in their careers.          Suggestions for future research: This is an interesting subject and as long as there are inequalities in society there is still reason to continue to explore the subject. One could for example examine other sectors than the bank sector or compare the female/male-ratio in leading positions in private and government owned companies. It might also be interesting to include male leaders or women who have not advanced in their careers among those who are interviewed.          Contribution of the thesis: Our research has contributed to us understanding why there are more male leaders than female leaders in the bank sector. We also hope that the study will help young women to see and understand the most common obstacles in women’s careers in order to minimize them for themselves. We also believe that board of directors in general would benefit from reading this thesis since it would give them a greater understanding of the problem and hopefully speed up the process of obliterating the inequalities. The study has shed light on the problem and also tried to give suggestions on how to diminish it.

With the rise of feminism, the number of working women has increased significantly. Relatively, the proportion of women who act as supervisors has been increasing continuously and obviously. In many well-known international enterprises, many high-ranking female leaders have emerged, displaying their unique characteristics of management and leadership, leading companies to increasingly thriving. The study mainly explored the leadership styles of female leaders and gender role related matters. The study objects were high-ranking female leaders. By the means of field interview, female leaders in various industries were interviewed. The data collected and contents of interviews were cross compared with the self-assessment of the interviewees. This study explored through three aspects as below: 1. Leadership styles of female leaders 2. Impact of gender role 3. The gender role impact of female leaders on the leadership style Based on the individual leadership characteristics and gender identity, main leadership styles and commonality were summarized. Critical successful factors were explored through the characteristics, style and experience of successful female leaders. This study adopted the methods of qualitative research, case study and semi-structured intensive interview. The findings of this study are listed as below: 1. The leadership style of high-ranking female leaders: Democratic leadership is the main style, supplemented by autocratic leadership to guide the subordinates to negotiate, reach a consensus and achieve goals. 2. Work-centered leadership style: Most female leaders adopt work-centered style which can easily achieve the goal of work. 3. Mainstream of transformational leadership: The study found out that all female leaders adopted transformational leadership uniformly. The main reason is that it is more suitable for working environment and it is effective in developing team consensus. 4. Glass ceiling effect: Owing to the change of gender stereotype, professional capabilities and work performances were the main basis for promotion. Gender isn¡¦t the main factor to be considered any longer.

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