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Woman Engineer Magazine, launched in 1979, is a career-guidance and recruitment magazine offered at no charge to qualified women engineering, computer science and information technology students & professionals seeking employment and advancement opportunities in their careers.

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Pride, Not Being Cheerful, Viewed As Key For Leadership

It’s time to wipe that smile off your face. Women are perceived as being more willing to lead if they show that they are proud of their personal performance. If, however, they give a cheerful impression, they are judged to have less willingness to take on leadership roles than men who display similar emotions. This is one of the initial findings of a long-term project in which economic researchers at Technische Universität München (TUM) in Germany investigate the selection and assessment of leaders. They found that women themselves still expect more leadership qualities from men. In the next stage of their project, the TUM researchers want to develop gender-neutral HR management- training programs.

To increase their share of leadership positions, women are expected to have a range of assets—usually demonstrating improved negotiation skills, networking strengths, and the ability to develop a strategic career ladder. “But even these skills are not enough,” maintains professor Isabell Welpe of TUM’s chair for strategy and organization. “They ignore the fact that there are stereotypes that on a subconscious level play a decisive role in the assessment of high achievers. Leaders should be assertive, dominant, and hard-lined; women are seen as mediators, friendly, social.”

In a number of studies, researchers presented a variety of scenarios with potential leaders and their employees to randomly selected individuals. They then asked the study participants about their perceptions and expectations.

It emerged that the same behavior exhibited by women and men in leadership positions is assessed in different ways. When employees were assigned a task in a certain scenario, the study participants expected better performance if a man had delegated the work.

Previous studies have shown that individuals who are seen as willing to lead do, in fact, have a greater chance of being appointed to a leadership position, which puts women at a disadvantage because they are, on average, perceived as being less interested in management roles.

TUM researchers also looked at how emotions play a role in this perception. The study participants saw scenarios in which men and women were either cheerful or proud of their personal performance, or else showing no emotion at all. Those who came across as proud were assessed as having greater leadership willingness. This effect was significantly more pronounced in the case of the women in the study.

“Women who looked cheerful were judged to less willing to lead,” explains Welpe. “Pride, on the other hand, is positively associated with leadership qualities.”

 

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