Leadership and women

Abstract

The economic and social history tends to relate the power and the exercise of power of the leader with the men‘s figure. However, within the context of business, more and more women show they can perform as effective leaders. This paper aims to provide an overview on the evolution of leadership theories and to present a different vision about effective leadership looked through the prism of genre. The central argument of the paper is that the polarization implicit within the constructs male leadership and female lead as separate entities is a futile exercise and is based on a stereotype. The important conclusion is that transformational leadership, as the center of worldwide accepted theories about leadership, not particular to a genre, but can be exercised both by men as by women.