Managing the Woman Boss/Male Subordinate Relationship

Abstract

“I wish I could say I like working with a woman, but the truth is it's an awful lot of trouble. With a man, I know where I'm at; with a woman, I'm at sea. They just don't act like they know what they're doing.” These words of a US Sprint executive in an interview with Business Month magazine [3, p.43] echo the sentiments of many men who are forced to work for or with people of the opposite sex. Half the respondents in a recent Gallop poll do not care if it is a man or a woman that they work for. But almost all of those who do care prefer to work for a man. How are today's female junior managers who have spent fourteen years working side by side with men at school supposed to react in their first supervisory role that puts them in charge of more men than women? There is an abundance of leadership styles a woman can choose from. She can be masculine, she can be feminine, or she can take on the best of both worlds and be androgynous. This article attempts to address the most successful leadership traits for a woman that has a staff composed of men, fifty percent of which would rather be working for a man.

Citation

Cooper, P. and Kleiner, B.H. (1993), "Managing the Woman Boss/Male Subordinate Relationship", Equal Opportunities International, Vol. 12 No. 6, pp. 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb010612