When I was a teenager and a twenty-something, I learned about androgyny from David Bowie. When I studied literature, I learned about androgyny from Margaret Fuller, Carl Jung, Adrienne Rich, and beyond. Gender fluidity was the special mark of Decadents of all shapes, sizes, cultures, and eras. Morality turned on its head by late 19th-century literary rebels, artists, drag queens, punks, activists. Despite being a male in a female-dominated profession, despite what I have heard about the “queer-friendly” nature of libraries, I never expected to see androgyny in Library School.
Imagine my pleasant surprise when I was assigned to read Ayman and Korabik’s “Leadership: Why Gender and Culture Matter” (2010) and discovered the concept of androgyny in leadership.
Before I go on, I’m going to lay out several assumptions so that I don’t get mired down in attempting to prove basic points.
- The terms “masculine” and “feminine” are terms of convenience. My use of them does not reflect any opinion as to whether or to what degree they are rooted in biological maleness or femaleness. I don’t care about that.
- Transgendered people, masculine women, and feminine men exist and are morally neutral with a high degree of individual variation, just like masculine men and feminine women.
- Feminine traits are morally neutral and generally to be judged on their effectiveness in any given situation, just like masculine traits.
- “Natural” is a term of convenience that may point to biological origins or may just reflect something so ingrained from such an early age that it would take an inordinate amount of effort to change in adulthood.
- Some people are naturally more masculine or feminine. For whatever reason, the majority of men are more masculine, while the majority of women are more feminine. When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of the individual, this fact is absolutely worthless.
- Despite “nature,” masculine and feminine skill sets can be learned and mastered. They are available to everyone, although they will come more easily to some than others.
- Deficiencies in the effectiveness of some individuals is sometimes due to perceptions and judgments of those individuals based on passively accepted moral preconceptions. Where this is true, perceptions must be challenged before the true effectiveness of the individual can be measured. (E.g., female “ball-busters”—women utilizing masculine traits and skill sets—are not necessarily less effective than masculine male leaders, although they are frequently perceived to be so. On a level playing field, I assume judgments would be different.)
Androgyny as a concept in leadership studies starts with the basic notion that certain relationship-oriented, “expressive” traits are associated with the feminine, including “prioritizing interpersonal relationships, expressing emotions, rewarding positive behaviour [and] paying attention to personal and socioemotional factors that go beyond technical knowledge.” Traits associated with the masculine are goal-oriented or “instrumental” and include “ambition, independence, dominance [and] rationality” (Gartzia & van Engen, 2012, p. 293).
Male and female leaders both have access to instrumental and expressive traits. Some research has found, in fact, that women in leadership positions already have a grasp of the instrumental approach. Men lag behind in the process of broadening their leadership skill sets. As Gartzia and van Engen state, “men generally show lower scores in expressiveness than women whereas women do not show lower scores on instrumentality than men” (2012, p. 297). At the same time, as definitions of leadership and workplace methods and expectations have evolved, expressive traits have become just as essential to organizational effectiveness as instrumental traits (Gartzia & van Engen, 2012, p. 292-293).
There are two points that I extract from this. One is that any residual resistance to women in leadership positions is an artifact of obsolete modes of thinking and of fear. According to Ayman and Korabik’s research, “women leaders are viewed as being less effective when they are in male-dominated settings or leadership roles that are defined as more masculine” (2010, p. 159). However, objective measures show women to be more prepared for leadership than men. Men’s perception otherwise is irrational and counterproductive.
Society’s conscious acknowledgement of the fact of gender equality and the equal valuation of stereotypical gendered traits as skill sets independent of biological sex go hand in hand. Opportunities for women to thrive in power positions is one obvious benefit. Ayman and Korabik make an interesting point about this:
Overall, a trend has been observed in which androgynous individuals have the same chance as masculine individuals to be identified as leaders … These findings are encouraging for women’s leadership prospects. Androgyny may offer women a way out of the double bind they are put in when they are expected to have the instrumental qualities that are associated with leadership ability but also the expressive qualities associated with their prescribed gender role.
(2010, p. 162)
In this formulation, gender bias still operates: the use of the expressive skill set allows women not to rub their male subordinates the wrong way, so that their instrumental skills are more palatable.
That message hits a sore spot for me, though. The point of androgyny in leadership is that modern organizational success requires both “masculine” and “feminine” traits. When traits ascribed to both genders are acknowledged to be equal in value, I would hope that that represents a giant step toward an acknowledgement that all people are equal in value regardless of gender. In this scenario, women would be given their due because they employ all of the relevant skill sets, not because their behavior somehow matches their reproductive organs.
The second point is that men have as much to gain from this evolution as women. As Gartzia and van Engen point out, “a particular aspect to take into account when promoting communal leadership dimensions in the practice is the need to reduce gender stereotypes and the resistance of men in the development of expressive traits” (2012, p. 306). Reduction of stereotypical thinking translates into a greater acceptance of more relationship-based modes of being. This has positive implications for men as leaders, as employees, and simply as human beings.
The less credence given to traditional ways of classifying men and women, the better off we will all be. Androgyny represents a way of tapping into human potential by utilizing the full range of tools available to human beings, regardless of cultural prescriptions. As much as it offers women a chance to “legitimize” their attainment of authority, it offers everyone, of all sexes and genders, something much more essential.
References
Ayman, R. & Korabik, K. (2010). Leadership: Why gender and culture matter. American psychologist, 65(3), p. 157-170.
Gartzia, L. & van Engen, M. (2012). Are (male) leaders “feminine” enough? Gendered traits of identity as mediators of sex differences in leadership styles. Gender in management, 27(5), p. 292-310. DOI: 10.1108/17542411211252624
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