![]() ![]() ![]() The implication, which is of concern not only in economic but also in social and political domains of decision making, is that critical decisions would be mainly left to men, potentially causing inefficiencies and an over-representation of the preferences of a particular subgroup of the population. 2 Over and above differences in other traits relevant to leadership, such as risk tolerance or competitiveness, differences in attitudes toward decision-making responsibility may play a distinct role in why women are less likely than men to volunteer for (and rise to) leadership roles. It is this component of leadership, taking on the responsibility of decision making, that we focus on in this article. Women have been found to be less willing than men to make decisions on behalf of others in risky contexts (Ertac and Gurdal, 2012 2019) and less willing to assume a position of coercive power in groups (Banerjee et al., 2015). The recent ‘leader emergence’ literature in psychology shows that women have lower motivation to lead and may be more concerned about whether they will harm others with the decisions that they will need to make as leaders (Elprana et al., 2015). Attitudes toward responsibility in social contexts can be an important factor behind observed gender differences in leadership. Building decision-making skills and learning how to handle responsibility and accountability for others’ outcomes are in fact major focus points of most leadership training programmes (Wood and Winston, 2005, Blenko et al., 2010). In particular, they are consequential for the people who delegate decision-making responsibility to the leader. These decisions (such as investment, financing and recruitment decisions in a corporation or campaign decisions in a political party) are often risky in nature and determine how the team, firm or party/electorate fares. Consistently with this, many corporations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and colleges now implement leadership training programmes targeted towards females, designed to both build women’s leadership skills and get them interested in leadership in the first place.Ī major component of a leader’s job is to hold the power and responsibility for making decisions on behalf of others. Indeed, there is evidence that women are less likely than men to seek to be elected to political leadership positions, and that female students are less likely to run for student government in college (Lawless and Fox, 2008 New, 2014 Kanthak and Woon, 2015). 1 While explanations such as discrimination have also been put forward, self-selection-that is, differences in leadership ambition-are likely a major factor behind these gender gaps. ![]() Around the world, only 17% of government ministers, and only 5.2% of S&P 500 chief executve officers (CEOs) are female. For example, at the 2014 G20 summit, only five out of 58 leaders were female. The stark scarcity of females in leadership positions persists despite much improvement in societal norms and institutional barriers in recent years. As one rises in the hierarchy of corporations or in politics, one increasingly needs to take on leadership roles, assuming responsibility for making executive decisions. Leadership is an important component of many such careers. It is well documented that women occupy top executive positions in politics and industry much less frequently than men. ![]()
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