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Science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) workplaces worldwide remain stubbornly resistant to gender equality initiatives. Leaders are vital to driving change, but the extent to which their capabilities lead to change remains unknown. This article examines STEMM leaders' gender competence to achieving transformative changes in gender inequality.

This article examines the capability of STEMM leaders to act as change agents through an in-depth, qualitative analysis of perceptions of gender inequality, sexual harassment, sex discrimination and gender bias within their organisations. Findings are analysed using a customised tripartite gender competence schema, comprising commitment, knowledge and method (or know-how).

The findings suggest that while STEMM leaders may express a commitment to addressing gender inequality, misapprehensions about the nature and scope of the problem are likely to hamper efforts. Two key misapprehensions standout: a tendency to frame gender inequality in primarily numerical terms; and recourse to blaming external factors beyond STEMM for gender inequality in STEMM.

This article makes an original contribution by examining the gender competence of leaders in STEMM organisations, which has not been previously researched. The findings extend understanding of the salience of leaders' capabilities to lead change by identifying key gaps and misapprehensions in STEMM leaders' understanding of the nature and scope of the problem.

Despite abundant research on the negative effect of gender stereotypes on female leaders, it remains unclear whether leader competence perceived by the subordinates could overcome this backlash effect. Drawing on expectation states theory and expectancy violation theory, the authors investigate how the interaction among leaders' gender roles, leader sex and subordinates' perceived leader competence influences leader effectiveness through subordinates' affective trust.

Data were collected through two-wave surveys among 489 participants from various sectors in different parts of China. SPSS and Hayes PROCESS were used to test the hypotheses.

High competence perceived by the subordinates helps female leaders to overturn the negative effect of masculinity and strengthen the positive effect of femininity, whereas this positive moderation does not hold for male leaders.

This study addresses the ongoing debate about “female advantage” in leadership by showing that female leaders benefit from high perceived competence and are penalized by low perceived competence to a greater extent than male leaders in terms of leader effectiveness.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether, how and why gender cues influence brand perception and subsequent purchasing behaviour.

Across four experimental studies conducted online with either a convenience sample (Studies 1a and 1b) or a representative sample of consumers (Studies 2 and 3), the authors empirically investigate whether gender cues impact brand perception along dimensions of warmth and competence and how other warmth and competence cues in a consumer environment moderate the effect of gender cues on consumer brand perceptions.

Gender cues (e.g. gender-typed colours and shapes) activate gender-stereotypical knowledge of warmth and competence, which spills over to the brand. This effect depends on the presence of other competence cues in a consumer’s environment. In contrast to conventional practice, in the presence of a high competence cue (e.g. reputable brands), feminine gender cues enhance purchase likelihood (via activation of warmth perceptions), whereas masculine cues actually decrease purchase likelihood. In contrast, in the presence of a low competence cue (e.g. new companies), masculine gender cues enhance purchase likelihood (via activation of competence perceptions), whereas feminine cues lower purchase likelihood.

The authors used an experimental approach to explicitly test for causality and isolate the effect of gender cues in a controlled setting. Future research should further address the implication of gender cues using actual sales data.

Reputable companies often explicitly use cues to highlight their competence. The results of this research suggest that managers may want to reconsider this approach. That is, marketers of brands with established high competence should consider integrating more feminine cues to highlight their warmth, such as feminine shapes (e.g. circles and ovals) or feminine colours (e.g. a shade of pink) in their packaging and marketing communication. In contrast, companies that have not established their competence or not-for-profit organisations would be better off integrating masculine cues.

This is the first research to empirically investigate the effect of gender cues on brand perception and subsequent purchase behaviour. Not only does this research show that gender cues can alter brand perception along the warmth and competence perception but also the authors address the call to identify conditions under which warmth versus competence cues enhance brand perception and purchase likelihood (Aaker et al., 2010). In particular, this research demonstrates how multiple warmth and competence cues interact with each other.

Innovation differs among individuals and societies and changes over time. The question is whether female entrepreneurs in China are becoming more prominent in innovation? Are women entrepreneurs' participation, education, competence, opportunity-motivation and innovativeness increasing in China, perhaps faster than elsewhere around the world? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

These questions are addressed by analyzing the data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor on nascent entrepreneurs in the countries surveyed in at least two years since 2001 with at least five years between first and most recent survey. The sample is 129,465 nascent entrepreneurs in 58 countries, including 4,433 entrepreneurs starting an enterprise in China. These entrepreneurs reported on their innovativeness, comprising newness of technology used in production, absence of competitors producing the same products, and three newness of the product to customers. The data are analyzed by multivariate statistics, especially regressions and hierarchical models.

First, among the entrepreneurs starting enterprises in China, the proportion of women has increased dramatically over the years, approaching equality with the men. Second, women entrepreneurs compared to male entrepreneurs in China have increased in education, competences, opportunity motive and innovativeness. The increasing prominence of women in innovation in China is unsurpassed by any other country in the sample and thus seems unique in the world.

This study is valuable by exploring the changing participation of women in entrepreneurship and especially in the entrepreneurship that is innovative.

As part of the EFOP-3.3.3-VEKOP-16–2016-00001 “Museum and Library Development for All” project, a national representative digital literacy survey was conducted in Hungary's public libraries at the end of 2019. The aim of the present study is to provide a deeper analysis of the data collected during the survey to answer the question of the role of gender and age in the development of digital skills amongst librarians working in public libraries. This study was designed to answer the following four research questions: Are there levels of proficiency defined by DigComp 2.1 that are more specific to men or more specific to women? Are there areas of competence and competences that are clearly perceived as stronger or weaker for men or women? Are there areas of competence that are clearly influenced by age and others that are not or only moderately influenced by age? Which competences are clearly age-related, and which are not or only slightly affected by age?

The main target group of the study were library professionals working in county libraries. The survey, based on the DigComp 2.1 (Gomez et al., 2017) framework, was conducted using an online questionnaire in the form of a self-assessment and explored four levels of digital literacy. A 30-question questionnaire was completed by 1,868 respondents. The sampling procedure was essentially stratified sampling. The large number of respondents and the sampling procedure combined with the representativeness of the sample meant that the results of the survey can be considered as generalisable to the whole Hungarian public library sector.

Of the five competency areas assessed by the DigComp framework, librarians were found to be most competent in information and data literacy, and least competent in content development, according to the proportion of those with basic skills. 32 percent of women and 22 percent of men working in libraries rated their digital skills as basic, and both groups were weak or less weak in the same skills, with a few exceptions. At the intermediate level, there is a predominance of women. In the information and communication competency areas and in the content development and integrating and re-elaborating digital content in the content creation area, a high proportion of women consider their digital skills to be medium. Relatively few men rate their own competence in these areas as average. They are most likely to have advanced and highly specialised skills. The advanced level in DigComp2.1 implies, in addition to strong digital skills, the willingness and ability to help others, while the highly specialised level requires innovative and creative use of digital technology and knowledge transfer. These top two skill levels are more common amongst men. 34 per cent of men and 27 per cent of women have advanced skills, while 13 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women have highly specialised’s level. The age of librarians has only a minimal influence in certain areas of competence and for certain competences. Skills in the information and data literacy competency area are less age sensitive. For the data management competency, which requires more technological skills, a stronger correlation between age and skill levels is observed, especially for basic and highly specialised skills. In the communication competence area, the youngest age group of librarians has the highest percentage of advanced and the lowest percentage of basic level. The proportion of advanced learners decreases steadily as age groups progress and the proportion of basic learners increases at a similar steady rate. The effect of age on the content creation is much more modest than expected. Age clearly has an impact on the safety competence area. As age increases, the proportion of those at advanced level decreases and the proportion at basic level increases. Age also has a significant effect on the problem-solving competence area. One in two librarians in the 50 and 60s have only basic level skills, compared to one in four in the youngest age group and one in three in the 40s.

Using the DigComp 2.1 framework, a digital competence survey of a whole professional group of library professionals working in public libraries in Hungary was carried out. The study provides new insights into the impact of gender and age as variables on digital competence.

The purpose of this study is to understand how executives in technology companies relate to targets for gender equality, especially pertaining to top management.

The study draws on 19 interviews of CEOs, senior line managers and HR directors in ten technology companies operating in Finland. The method is (reflexive) thematic analysis.

Previous studies on the role of executives in promoting gender equality provide somewhat mixed results: while their role is vital, senior leaders may not be inclined to support gender equality targets and measures. Drawing on critical feminist theorizing, this study identifies three ways in which the executives in technology companies related to gender equality targets: endorsing, negotiating and resisting. However, all these responses were constrained by the executives’ assumption that their companies are meritocratic. The study illustrates how executives’ narrow understanding of gender equality and reliance on the presumably well-working systems, combined with underlying doubts about the competence of women, hinder the advancement of women to top management.

While previous studies have evaluated targets to increase the number/percentage of women, both in certain “ideal case” companies and in terms of their effectiveness more broadly, this study discusses how technology company executives navigate these targets in relation to women's assumed “competence”.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to research on gender and corporate boards of directors by focusing on how female board professionals construct particular notions of accessing and succeeding in boards.

A discursive perspective is offered, based on conceiving gender as something that is “done” in social interaction. In the spirit of critical discourse analysis, the talk of female board professionals, produced in interviews in the Finnish context, is analyzed in‐depth.

Two discourses are located in the talk of female board professionals: the discourse of competence and the discourse of gender. It is argued that the discourses constitute a boardroom gender paradox, which is characterized by several contradictory elements. By conceptualizing and illustrating this paradox, the study scrutinizes the elusive ideal of women's large‐scale entry into corporate boards.

Future studies should make use of the insights developed, and apply them to cross‐societal comparative research.

For corporate decision‐makers, the findings suggest a rethinking of how “competence” is defined and applied.

Paradox has rarely been addressed in the literature on gender and corporate boards. Understanding how the women interviewed (re)construct a boardroom gender paradox offers a unique contribution to the literature.

The purpose of this study is to understand how applicant gender may interact with recruiter and organizational characteristics to affect organization attraction. Interpreting characteristics of individuals (e.g., recruiters) and organizations requires some degree of interpersonal sensitivity. Evidence shows that women are generally more skilled in this area than men, but women’s skills are not stronger when evaluating characteristics that are male relevant (e.g., dominance, status).

This study used an experimental between-subjects design in one sample of undergraduate students and one sample of working adults to explore the interaction of applicant gender with two known predictors of organization attraction: recruiter competence and hiring firm reputation.

As hypothesized, there was a significant interaction between recruiter competence and applicant gender on organization attraction in both samples. Contrary to the hypothesis, there was a significant interaction between hiring firm reputation and applicant gender in the sample of working adults, but not the sample of undergraduate students.

Results suggest that firms wishing to increase the number of women in their workforces should be particularly mindful of how they select and train recruiters as well as how positively their reputation is perceived by potential job applicants.

These results suggest that there may be gender differences in how applicants perceive and react to a variety of factors during the recruitment process that previous research has not considered.

Since Schein’s evocative and enduring metaphor "think manager – think male" there has been a stream of literature discussing gender difference in managerial style. The newer literature about managerial competence, however, remains largely silent about gender, regardless of whether managerial competence is contextualised in an organizational or a human resources perspective. This is true even of edited collections where gender tokenism is generally evident. The study uses a rarely‐researched sample, female manufacturers in small and medium manufacturing enterprises, to explore gender and managerial competence and to test Marshall’s suggestion that the next wave of theorizing may well strengthen an “androgynous” manager model. The findings show a pattern of both similarity and difference in the managerial competence of male and female manufacturers in technology uptake and tentative support for the androgynous manager model.

This chapter discusses the relevance of a community of practice (CoP) for a reflexive gender equality policy and reflects on the different approaches taken within TARGET. It is based on the literature on CoPs and structural change as well as on experiences in transferring this approach to the context of implementing gender equality plans (GEPs) within different types of research organisations. While the notion of the CoP was coined in the 1990s, literature on gender and such communities remained scarce until a recent wealth of research looked at the role played by inter-institutional CoPs in advancing structural change in research organisations. In this chapter, we examine whether and how an institutional CoP approach has been a useful vehicle for gender equality plan development and how the different configurations of internal and external stakeholders within the CoPs have impacted GEP implementation.