Effects of Gender and Sex Type on Perceived Leadership Abilities

Abstract

The effects of gender and sex type on perceived leadership abilities were investigated. The participants consisted of 33 resident assistants at a state university. They completed the Bern Sex Role Inventory and a sociometric instrument that measured perceived leadership abilities. The researchers hypothesized that the men in the study would tend to be perceived as leaders and that those men would be androgynous, possessing a high number of both feminine and masculine characteristics. Further, the women in the study would be perceived as single faceted by their peers; if a woman emerged as a leader, she would be perceived as effective in either disciplinary situations or in interpersonal situations, but not effective in both areas. The researchers also hypothesized that female leaders would be sex typed as either androgynous or masculine. From the results of the study, the researchers concluded that instead of one single male leader emerging within each residence hall, a group of co-ed leaders emerged within each halJ. The overall gender orientation of that leader group was predominantly masculine in all residence halls, with the exception of the all-female hall, for which the leader group was predominantly feminine. The participants' gender did not appear to affect their being viewed as single faceted in their leadership strengths by their peers. Even though the distribution of sex type among all the subjects studied was found not to differ from that of the general population, the participants were found to be more sex typed than the general population.