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Disagreement amongst Arab writers, researchers, politicians, and others exists regarding the Arab woman's struggle to take on a leadership role traditionally dominated by Arab men. For many, discussions on whether Arab women should work and lead, be a housewife or work with restrictions are continually under controversy. The purpose of this paper is to examine Arab women leadership style based on transformational, transactional, and laissez‐faire styles of men and women.

The main research instrument is the multifactor leadership questionnaire.

The findings reveal that women in the Arab world exceed men on four transformational scales: the attributes version of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Arab men exceed Arab women on two transactional scales: management by exception passive and management by exception active, whereas women exceed men on contingent rewards. Laissez‐faire leadership style goes to Arab men.

Although the paper provides a useful overview of the traditional thinking and abilities of Arab women leadership and their effectiveness in the Arab world, the sample is limited in size. Further research can be done with larger sample to test the findings.

The paper offers inputs for researchers and writers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review of current trends with regard to women in leadership positions. Women are increasingly reported as having excellent leadership skills. In fact, women, more than men, are praised for having traits and styles that are associated with effective leadership performance.

The design of this paper was a literature review of current research on gender differences in men and women in top leadership roles.

Despite the evidence that women are capable of being top performers, women are still not attaining top-level leadership positions in comparison to their male peers. This paper will consider some of the reasons that women have difficulty in climbing the corporate ladder as well as discuss stereotyping and gender as it relates to leadership traits.

As a result of this paper, employers are encouraged to hire and promote women into their corporations top leadership positions.

This paper further contributes to the discussion of women in leadership and the disparity that continues in having women employed in the upper echelons of corporations. The value of this paper is to provide employers further evidence that women comprise skillsets that necessary for company advancement.

The paper provides an invited “Viewpoint” from Professor Susan Vinnicombe, along with contributions from Professor Sharon Mavin, on women leaders’ progress on UK company boards and suggests areas for future research.

Draws on data from the annual UK The Female FTSE Board Report (2021) and The Hidden Truth Report (2022), tracking gender diversity on UK company boards. Professor Vinnicombe outlines reflections on progress, and jointly the authors highlight suggested areas for future women-in-leadership research.

The authors argue against the continued use of the business case for gender diversity and suggest a research agenda for future women-in-leadership research concerning: gender-aware Chairs of Boards and Chief Executive Officers and men allies; access and appointment to senior board roles; and bias in senior appointments. We suggest a return to examining barriers to women’s progress in middle management, the role of middle managers/leaders and the uptake and impact of established flexible ways of work at executive levels. New research is possible into how women leaders in top positions have a positive influence on gender diversity yet are discriminated against by various publics. The authors recommend further intersectional research as a priority for women-in-leadership research to enable further theorizing and feminist progress.

Professor Sue Vinnicombe has dedicated her academic career to questioning barriers to women’s progress in management/leadership and actively influencing organisational practice. Sue was influential in the field before her first co-authored papers were published in Women in Management Review (our predecessor) in 2001 and 2002. Professor Sharon Mavin is a previous co-editor of Gender in Management: an international journal. Her first papers were published in Women in Management Review in 1999 and 2001. Sharon is co-editor of the Special Issue, women-in-leadership research and feminist futures: new agendas for feminist research and impact on gender equality.

The Women in Leadership Development (WLD) Initiative is a year-long, multifaceted co-curricular leadership development opportunity created to support the unique developmental needs of emerging women leaders. WLD was intentionally designed around the context of second-generation gender bias with a firm grounding of research and theory on gender and leadership.

Organized around three leadership pathways – leadership training, leadership coaching, and leadership support networks – WLD brings together the best practices of leadership development in combination with feminist pedagogy and critical perspectives to foster meaningful and impactful development of women leaders.

This paper describes the design of the initiative and how each leadership pathway supports the leadership development journey for emerging women leaders. It provides a model that is impactful as well as foundational, for undergraduate women’s leadership development.

Women leaders, in particular, can benefit from leadership development that takes gender into account (DeFrank-Cole & Tan, 2022a; Ely et al., 2011).

To promote gender equality, world leaders at the UN came up with Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5). It proposes to eliminate discrimination against women by providing them with similar opportunities for reaching leadership positions. Hence, this study aims to examine the contribution made by women transformational leaders to their employees’ performance. The study seeks to emphasize the role played by female leaders in the on-job performance of employees and their mental well-being by encouraging intrinsic motivation among them.

For the purpose of data collection, a questionnaire was sent through Google Forms to the employees who had females as their superiors or in the decision-making position. Data from a final sample of 517 respondents was gathered, on which SEM was applied to analyze the direct impact of transformational women’s leadership on employee performance and the indirect impact through the mediation of intrinsic motivation.

The study found that by having feminine traits, women are stronger transformational leaders as they encourage individuals to be self-motivated instead of getting stimulated because of some external incentive. Also, such a leadership style ensures better work performance and mentally healthier employees. In addition, transformational women's leadership creates a better work environment by inspiring a teamwork culture instead of individualism.

The study has implications for not just researchers but other stakeholders as well. The study is useful for organizations as it directs them to hire and promote more women for leadership positions. Also, the results hint that people prefer working for women-led organizations as it will ensure a healthier work atmosphere.

There are many studies from earlier times related to transformational leadership. However, female leadership and the role it plays for employees have not gotten their fair share of attention. Thus, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present work is one of the very few where contributions made by women transformational leaders have been assessed.

This study aims to examine how woman leadership (i.e., woman board chairperson, woman chief executive officer (CEO) and board gender diversity) affects audit fee and also ascertained the interactive effect of woman leadership and gender diversity on audit committee on audit fee.

The study applied ordinary least square and fixed-effect estimators on the data of 21 universal banks in Ghana for the period 2010–2021 to estimate the empirical results.

It is revealed that under the leadership of women (woman CEO and board gender diversity), higher external audit quality is ensured as higher audit fee is paid. Interestingly, it was found that with the presence of women on the audit committee, the integrity of internal controls and internal audit procedures are enhanced, which leads to quality financial reporting, calls for lower audit effort, hence lower audit fee.

The result indicates that firms can rely on the leadership of women in ensuring quality external audit and quality financial reporting, which ultimately helps to minimize the information risk to all stakeholders.

The paper contributes to extant literature by establishing that, under the leadership of women in banking entities from a developing country context, external audit quality and financial reporting are achieved.

The purpose of this study is to understand challenges and constraints in reaching top leadership positions for women in the Portuguese press. Specifically, it aims at characterizing their communication and leadership styles, and at identifying main gender biases in newsrooms routines from their point of view.

A qualitative method was employed by conducting in-depth interviews with four women who have held higher management positions in Portuguese leading newspapers. Participants were asked to characterize their communication and leadership style, but also newsrooms environment, trying to understand how gender asymmetries persist and manifest. Results were analyzed using thematic analysis.

While considering that Portuguese newsrooms are no longer environments marked by a sexist/macho environment, through increasing female participation, women still represent a minority in leadership. Leadership traits linked to male styles, including assertiveness and courage, were revealed, though mixed with a more participative/relational leadership. Also, female leaders regret when emotional ties with teams are not developed and recognized some degree of privilege towards other women through family support or not having children.

There is a limited number of interviews, although they represent the few top women leaders in Portuguese journalism.

Policymaking recommendations derived from conclusions include participative leadership, implementing quotas, and monitoring tools of gender biases and special training.

Media literacy policies and open debates on main media outlets concerning female leadership and communication styles may contributes toward the acknowledgement of lingering gender biases in the industry.

This study contributes to a fuller insight into the identification of leadership and personal traits among women who managed to disrupt stigmas and break barriers. Their voices are seldom heard in studies focusing leadership, so results enable ascertaining whether there is a female way of leading in journalism and comprehending the sense of privilege these women perceive.

In the two consecutive surveys conducted by the authors in 2015 and 2018, it was found that out of a total of 810 and 1008 Indian higher educational institutions, only 54 and 63 institutions (6.67 and 6.25%) were led by women, 725 and 934 institutions (89.51 and 92.7%) were led by men and 31 and 11 (3.83 and 1.1%) were reported to either have no information about their leaders or those posts were vacant (Banker and Banker, 2017; EduShine Report, 2015 and 2018). The current study is a follow-up attempt so that the knowledge around the status of women academic leaders in Indian higher education (2021) can be upgraded. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

The qualitative exploratory research approach was followed for conducting the study.

It was found that out of the current total of 1151 Indian higher educational institutions, still only 110 (9.55%) are led by women, 1031 (89.57%) are led by men and for 10 institutions (0.86%) data on leadership is unavailable. Important contextual inferences have been made in the discussion section followed by the concentrated literature around the possible reasons for such low representation of women leaders in the global higher education sector.

One possible limitation of this study is that it does not provide an idea about why there is the highest women leadership in central institutions and the lowest in INIs. Taking the contextual factors into consideration, an extended exploration could have been made of different facilitators and barriers for each type of Indian HEI. The author invites future researchers to conduct this inquiry and come up with certain remedies, which is also one of the limitations of this study. Different enablers and disablers can be found through different primary and secondary research.

Increased women leadership will bring diversity in the institutions' modus operandi and impact their culture in a great way. It is the prime responsibility of women to break the glass ceiling and come out of their shells. Family responsibilities contribute to their career stress in a great way, and women may balance their personal and professional lives by creating a sound support system in their family. Utilizing domestic help services will liberate them partially from their routine and unimportant duties. This will allow women to focus on more important work related to their careers. Trending nuclear families is also one of the major contributors to low women leadership; joint family pattern may benefit women to nurture and build their career keeping their sanity intact. Institutional decision makers and other stakeholders at work will be sensitized toward different barriers experienced by not only women leaders but also women in lower positions. Men at work across the levels are responsible for creating a more inclusive and conducive workplace for women. Inclusive workplace policies will render women equal opportunities and fair rewards. Ensuring unbiased and prejudice-free work culture will have a positive impact on the self-efficacy level of women which can be validated through their performance.

Slow and steady efforts consciously made by both men and women in the workplace for the betterment of women may progressively help overcome the social preconditioning at a macro level.

All the studies reported in this paper have been sequentially conducted and are unique in the Indian higher education system.

This study aims to explore the factors that build positive leadership identities in women and reduce woman-leader identity conflict in societies with low gender equality. In doing so, it responds to calls to examine the role of “context” for women aspiring to leadership roles.

The required data were collected through semistructured interviews with 30 senior-level female leaders in the corporate sector of Pakistan and analyzed using NVivo.

Successful professional women are often facilitated by various social and organizational factors that boost their confidence and ability to view themselves positively as leaders, reducing woman-leader identity conflict. The main facilitators observed were egalitarian values practiced at home, male sponsorship in organizations and individual leadership experiences. Furthermore, the age and socio-economic status of women have also emerged as important factors contributing to the success of women leaders in Pakistani society, which is characterized by gender inequality and high power distance.

Organizations committed to developing women for leadership roles and attaining their gender diversity goals need to address the structural and psychological barriers that hinder women’s progress in the workplace. Moreover, men need to be engaged as allies to enable women’s advancement as organizational leaders.

This study highlights how culture, gender norms and significant experiences of women moderate equality lows in patriarchal societies. It aims to demonstrate that women can progress as leaders within a low gender-egalitarian culture in the presence of factors that facilitate the establishment of their identities as leaders, thus reducing identity conflict. In addition, the role that men can play in creating a supportive environment for establishing women’s leadership identities is particularly highlighted in this study.

The purpose of the study is to examine how women become leaders in the Security Services in Ghana and the challenges they face in the discharge of their responsibilities.

A qualitative phenomenological approach was adopted to explore the intentions and opinions of the participants, interpret their worlds through their lived experiences and present a clearer understanding of their stories.

The study revealed that women deliberately positioned themselves to be considered for leadership placements in their male-dominated professions. The study’s findings also suggest that although both men and women are considered equal in the service, women were faced with challenges in their daily experiences as leaders due to their gender. The gender barriers created a strenuous situation for women to rise to top leadership placements in the Security Services.

This research is one of the first studies that explored the experiences of women in middle and top leadership positions in the national Security Services in Ghana. It contributes to the literature by presenting how female leaders in the Security Services successfully navigate into leadership placements, the challenges and their strategies in excelling in their duties. The study is important in bridging the gender gap in leadership positions in the Security Services.