Why Gender and Culture Matter - Research Paper Example

? Leadership: Why Gender and Culture Matter Gender is simply a social construct and thus does refer to the differences and relationships existing between men and women, boys and girls. These are those opportunities and those attributes that distinguishes one as either male or female, and the concurrent social and cultural associations between male and female. Culture could be seen as beliefs and practices of a given group of people and are associated with traditions and religious matters. These aspects are learnt through social process and this is because they are socially created and could be passed from generation to generation. In many years now, leadership has been understood in a wrong way and thus misconceived. There are different models of leadership that are related to gender and cultural practices. These models are classified as trait or those based on categorization of leadership or simply implicit leadership theory,; behavioral which does include transformational-transactional leadership, two factor, and leader-member exchange models; and the contingency that encompasses the contingency model of leadership effectiveness and the normative decision making models. The dynamics of leadership in our societies normally end up being affected by culture and gender. This has more to do with the fact that we have long held stereotypes and schemas in people, the ingroup-outgroup interaction, power and status differences that do occur in people, and the role expectations. These dynamics have a serious impact on different leadership aspects (Ayman. & Korabik, 2010). Gender and culture do matter so much in the leadership concept in our societies even today. Gender does matter because of the fact that it is a series of some social roles that are very contagious. Sometimes, these social roles do help or support each other while at times they end up having a serious clush thus explains the factor of role performance, in which case some versions of normative kind of social roles are idealized and thus displayed over very appreciative and quite focused audience in a manner that is discerning places (Myers, 2010). The knowledge of what is required to be performed by each gender is clearly outlined and practiced and the people grow knowing that they are required to perform certain things or tasks. This is expressed in gender, authority, age and other practices. The transgression leads to some form of physical coercion. It has been noted that in many instances, females have come out clearly as being both dominant but very submissive at the same time, while the male gender is stuck on dominance. Gender and culture matter because they do present certain obstacles to one group towards the application of professional skills and promotions at work within the top level management (Weiten, 2010). Looking at the above two concepts from the leadership perspective, we find that leadership is a function that is determined by the intra-psychic properties. In this case, the personality values, attitudes, and traits which are gender related are normally got by way of gender-role socialization. With less regard of socio-demographic gender, the orientation of leaders towards the gender-role does affect the way they behave in real sense. Interestingly, the masculine traits end up giving a task-oriented leadership while on the other hand; the feminine traits do give the person-oriented leadership type. We also still have androgynous individuals who have been known to show some aspects of both orientations when it comes to behaviors and competencies. Culture comes to play when issues when leadership is viewed from the social structural perspective. This kind of argument does concentrate on some form of social roles and inequalities in structure that exist in our societies in cases where such aspects are prescribed. In this case, gender becomes a much ascribed characteristic of status which has the power to influence the access to pillars of authority or power and the ability to gain resources (Weiten, 2010). Interestingly, the gender aspect defined by the socio-demographic concept in leadership starts to work as a stimulus for the evaluations and concurrent perceptions that are held by other people. This approach of looking at gender and culture does make predictions on the basis that there are high possibilities of getting different outcomes through men leaders who are thought to have high status and their roles are congruent to the gender aspects of socio-demography. On the other hand, the society perceives women who are leaders to be of low social status and that their roles are incongruent with the above mentioned socio-demographic gender. Hence women become subordinates. The importance of gender and culture is further played in the general belief that the interaction with men and women subordinates and supervisors is quite different for male and female genders. Korabik & Ayman’s multi-perspectyive model seems to have a significant role in explaining the effect of culture and gender. They do propose an integration that takes into consideration all the three perspectives (Korabik & Ayman, 2007). They argue that the concept of leadership is described as a social interaction that takes place between leaders and their supervisors and the subordinates. This can be alluded to the fact that the kind of interaction in this scenario is majorly affected by the intra-psychic processes such as orientations of gender-role in all these parties. They dispute the salient nature of these processes occurring as in form of socio-demographic gender but that this only works as a characteristic of status and give the cue needed for activation of stereotypes that societies perceive (Ayman. & Korabik, 2010). It is a common practice that when concerns about the cultural aspects of life are raised on the basis of initiatives, they are normally associated with gender and the issue of equality in bringing development comes forth. Gender and culture matters even in programs because some officers in such programs normally express fear that when there is promotion of equality in gender it does interfere with the local practices or culture thus express reservations for promoting gender equality based on ethical reasons. Cultural practices have often been seen to conflict with modern views of gender. It is thus safe to say that culture shapes gender and where one is mentioned; the other is present and manifests itself in different forms. This is because the relationships exhibited by gender and the identities therein are very vital components of culture. There are societies that still segregate leaders on the basis of gender and thus it would be quite difficult to successfully enforce a given gender in leadership as an opposite of what they perceive. This is when gender and culture matters. It is however worth noting that societies which have allowed women to be leaders have seen much development, political stability and economic progress. It is thus important that all genders of society be given a chance to take leadership positions for progress. But even while doing this, the concept of culture can never be overlooked and will always play role in the success of whoever takes the leadership mantle. Organizations have also realized that when a mix of both genders is done in employment, teams that are formed to carry out different tasks end up being successful where both genders are incorporated in the work process. Women leaders have also been known to be less criminal in their activities although this is still a debatable issue since it eventually boils down to stereotyping leadership roles (Schalkwyk, 2000). Any decision that is made in a planning process eventually has an effect on culture and gender and it is thus important that the two are well analyzed to find the best fit. It is thus hard to achieve development initiatives without considering these two concepts. It is important that issues such as gender sensitivity are looked into. However, it is critically necessary that the cultural practices of the people are considered and respected to avoid a clash of interests. The sensitive nature of these two concepts have to do with the conflict of what is considered as modernity as is opposed to the traditional practice which is seen by many activists for gender equality as being heathen. However, a thin line needs to be found to balance cultural practices with the gender demands when positions of leadership are concerned. The psychological effect might be ignored but it has major consequences on whatever is being done and thus could be the sole definition of success or failure for such an initiative (Schalkwyk, 2000)! References Ayman, R. & Korabik, K. (2010), Leadership: Why gender and culture matter. American Psychologist Korabik, K. & Ayman, R. (2007), Gender and leadership in the corporate world: A multi-perpective model. In J.C. Lau, B. Lott, J. Rice, and J. Sanchez-Hudes (Eds), transforming leadership: Diverse visions and women’s voices, (pp. 106-124) Blackwell Myers, D. G. (2010), Psychology: 9th Edition in Modules. Worth Publishers, Inc. ISBN# 10: 1-4292-1638-7, ISBN# 13:978-1-4292-1638-8 Schalkwyk Johanna, (2000), Culture, Gender Equality and Development Cooperation, Canadian International Development Agency (Cida), Retrieved on 3rd October 2011, from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/9/1896320.pdf Weiten Wayne (2010), Psychology: Themes and Variations, Cengage Learning Read More