This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Every so often, a headline declares that women make better leaders. A widely cited 2019 Harvard Business Review analysis, for instance, found women outscored men on most leadership competencies.
But if women really do outperform men at the top, what explains the difference? A 2005 review of 46 meta-analyses found relatively few consistent psychological differences between women and men. That doesn't rule out differences relevant to leadership, but it suggests we should look beyond individual traits and consider the selection process itself.
Our recent research published in the Academy of Management Proceedings, and a related working paper, found the performance gap may tell us less about who the CEOs are than about what it took for them to get the job. Becoming CEO of a major publicly traded company is difficult for anyone. Women, however, may face additional hurdles along the way, including less access to informal networks, greater scrutiny of their performance and persistent assumptions about their competence and suitability for leadership.
Suppose two groups have similar distributions of ability, but one faces a higher threshold for advancement. Those who clear the higher threshold will, on average, be more highly selected. Their stronger performance does not necessarily mean the group had greater ability to begin with.
Rather, it can reflect the demands of the selection process. By the time people become CEOs, they have already passed through years of hiring, promotion and selection decisions. If those decisions impose different standards on different groups, the people who emerge at the top will reflect those standards.
On gender alone, it is difficult to distinguish this explanation from the possibility that women really are better suited to contemporary leadership. Performance data cannot settle that question, so we also looked at race. Research has also found that companies with more ethnic and cultural diversity on their executive teams are more likely to outperform on profitability.
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