Unveiling Women's Leadership

Identity and meaning of leadership in India

Payal Kumar

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137547040
• eBook ISBN: 9781137547064
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Unveiling Women's Leadership provides a penetrating insight into the world of Indian woman leaders. The book unravels the unique challenges facing the Indian woman leader who has to juggle several challenges including patriarchy, the caste system, harassment, and society's expectation that she ought to fit snugly into stereotypical roles.

Part I

Self-Identity, Nature and Nurture

1

Women and Leadership: A Neuro-Social Point of View

Bruce Hiebert

Abstract

Women’s brains are different from men’s in very significant ways. Yet, on closer examination, there is nothing about those differences that suggests any reason why women should not be found at all levels of leadership in close to full proportion to men. Recent work in neuroscience demonstrates the variety, capacity and plasticity of the female brain. These characteristics make it fully equivalent to a male brain, and with the correct social environment, training and nurture, female brains ought to produce the same social performance outcomes. However, the human brain is wired in such a way that it resists significant personal change in the face of social obstacles. There are specific strategies women must adopt to get out of the middle management ghettos in which they are often stuck. If women understood their brains better, they could make them work for them to achieve more social and organizational power.

Women face significant obstacles to achieving full parity with men in leadership positions. One of those obstacles is their brains. Women’s brains are different from men’s in very significant ways. Yet, on close examination, there is nothing about those differences that suggests any reason why women should not be found at all levels of leadership in close to full proportion to men. What recent work in neuroscience demonstrates is the variety, capacity and plasticity of the female brain. These characteristics make it fully equivalent to a male brain, and with the correct social environment, training and nurture, female brains should produce the same social performance outcomes. However, the human brain is wired in such a way that it resists significant personal change in the face of social obstacles. Because of the natural resistance, there are specific strategies women must adopt to get out of the middle management ghettos in which they are often stuck. If women understood their brains better, they could make them work for them to achieve more social and organizational power.

That women’s brains are different from men’s brains has been known for centuries, starting from the gross observation that on average women’s brains are smaller than men’s. Current research shows that in relation to men, women’s brains are structured differently, use chemical systems in slightly different ways and change in different ways under the impact of hormones (Blum, 1997). For example, a recent brain imaging study of maths problem solving by doctoral students demonstrated clear structural brain-based gender differences in the way men and women solve maths problems (Semrud-Clikeman et al., 2012). These differences are not necessarily due to life experience, and some are certainly based in hormonal differences from infancy. For example, Alexander and Wilcox (2012), in their review article, find that biological sex differences are related to the way the brain processes the external environment that is clearly present within the first 12 months of life, and some of these differences correlate to androgen levels in the first three months of life. On almost every test of human performance, men and women consistently diverge in their average outcomes. Be it communication, maths, relational skills, violence, emotional sensitivity or spatial manipulations, men’s and women’s brains function differently at the statistically significant level.

The biological differences between male and female brains have been used to argue that women are inherently more capable at some things and less capable at others than are men. On that basis, it seems a reasonable hypothesis that, when examining the current differential presence of men and women in senior positions of power or leadership, structural-functional brain operations have something to do with it. It is a hypothesis that feels right at many levels, yet it is not supported by close analysis.

When one looks at gender differences in performance results with a slightly finer grid, other statistical characteristics appear that raise serious questions about the meaningfulness of the general results. For example, Jordan-Young (2010) suggests that the differences found are often due to an overstatement of results based on small samples. In larger sample studies, there is a wide range of scores among both sexes, and the difference between any two women in their scores is easily as much as or greater than the difference between men and women as a whole (Eliot, 2010). In fact, no general test of individual human performance can be used to separate individual women from individual men. No behavioural outcome test results tell you if their subject is male or female. That information can only be identified from the demographic information written on the front of the test results. The brains of men and women are biologically different, but not so different that any abilities they have may be individually explained based on their sex. The pathways to individual maturation may be sex specific, but the process is not one which is biologically linear. Adult capacities are not determined by genetic sex (McCarthy & Arnold, 2011).

The value of using biological differences for explaining social outcomes comes further into doubt when we look at the learning capacities and natural plasticity of the human brain. The human brain, be it male or female, is not fixed but alterable, and we do alter it all the time through experience and training. The human brain is extraordinarily capable of transformation, of improving and changing its capacities in response to environmental conditions. Nurture changes nature, and the long-term impact of nurture far exceeds the initial biological differences between male and female brains. Nutrition, social expectations, training and experience all cause the brain to change in significant ways, adding some capacities and reducing others. If you wish to see the ultimate capacity of any individual brain, the only way to do so is by training it to its maximum capacity, giving it appropriate nurture and ensuring a supportive social environment for the outcomes you wish to test.

Then too, there is the impact of the individual human character. A sense of hope is a personal characteristic that is predictive of improved performance (Snyder, 2000). Simply having a clear sense of ability and direction (hope) produces people who are more resilient, capable and successful. Hope stands quite outside of sex and is an individual cognitive response to environmental and social conditions. No doubt other aspects of human character such as determination (will) and the wisdom of specific decisions are just as important in creating the conditions for success.

Human character combined with training and nurture leads to an infinite variety of outcomes where gender is not predictive. Thus it is obvious that when men and women are not equal in outcomes it is because the social conditions that surround them are not equal. The biological differences between the brains of women and the brains of men do not explain why women have not achieved leadership levels to the same extent as men. When women do not achieve to the same levels as men, it is because they have experienced restricted access to the training and nurture necessary to achieve those positions, typically because the surrounding social environment is hostile to their performance.

While sexual biology is not destiny, this does not mean the way forward is either straightforward or easy. Recognizing that the problem has social origins does not mean changing the social conditions solves the problem. A hostile social environment has profound neurological impacts that present serious long-term obstacles to female success. Access to education and women-focused leadership programs by themselves are not the answer (though they do contribute). Because the brain is composed of slowly grown and changing neural networks, change in social outcomes is slow and difficult. In this process of change, there must be an atypically supportive environment, because the social sensitivity of the brain is such that it easily reverts to previous conditions. To change neural pathways requires distinct efforts to overcome the natural tendencies of the human brain to seek behaviours that are harmonious with perceived social expectations and past experiences.

An important finding of contemporary neuroscience is that the brain is very sensitive to social conditions on an ongoing basis. From so-called mirror neurons to learned patterns of behaviour, the brain is shaped by its unconscious social interactions to feel good about personal behaviours that imitate or are rewarded by social groups. Even subtle social patterns have a long-term impact on brain wiring with significant behavioural impact (Adolphs, 2003; Shoemaker, 2012). While one may will to achieve a higher position, one’s own brain will handicap that will every time a possible resistant social circumstance is encountered. Our brains (male and female) seek social harmony – that is the way they are wired – and they find it difficult to confront social resistance (Singer & Lamm, 2009). Conformity naturally brings us peace, and we have been incrementally programmed since birth to know and respond in ways that make other people happy with our behaviour. Our brains expand their capacities in areas where they receive social support and other rewards. We become inherently better at the things other people like us to do and struggle painfully to change in those areas where others resist us, even if that resistance is subtle or unconscious.

The socially sensitive and programmable brain and the ongoing social cues add up to a profoundly restructured brain when looked at over 20, 30 or 40 years of experience. While a male baby and a female baby may be born to relatively equivalent capacities, by the time they are mature adults, their experiences will have shaped their brains in specific gendered ways leading to significantly different capacities and patterns of behaviour. This is so deeply embedded that there is no easy system of transformation for one to the behavioural capacities of the other. A mature woman, trained by a lifetime of social interaction, cannot act like a mature man, also trained by a lifetime of social interaction. The brain will not do it. It will not feel right, and if the nurturing conditions have been extreme enough, the raw capacities may no longer exist.

Women trained from childhood to think in terms of the well-being of family will never fully break the mode of thinking that relates to family. They cannot. If they become teachers, social workers, business people or leaders, they will still address their students, clients, colleagues and staff in terms of the mother-child or mother-family relationship in which they have been nurtured. Not surprisingly, that has a limiting effect on their career prospects. The world is not a family and, some feminist and utopian positions to the contrary, cannot become like a family. Thinking for a family does not allow you to run a safe nuclear power plant, develop appropriate marketing strategies, determine international investment patterns or manage a fleet logistics operation. To do all of those effectively requires disciplined, instrumental kind of thinking. Reason is important. Sometimes a certain ruthlessness is required. Many men and women have the raw capacity for doing that work, but while many men have been trained to think in the required mechanistic and agonistic terms, most women have not. Instead, women have been trained to nurture and support, to console and to build consensus. That is what works in a family, and while those characteristics are strengths for many middle management positions, they are not adequate for top jobs. That guilt is the single strongest emotional driver of behaviour (Angie et al., 2011) only indicates how much it is likely that built-in personal expectations for family-oriented performance will lead to self-limiting behaviour.

An acquaintance was offered the position of senior management in a major national corporation. She demonstrated the necessary rational and disciplined thinking to move to the top ranks of the company. She turned the position down and subsequently left the company. Her rationale was that it would take her too far away from her family. It is the type of decision made countless times by women all around the world. Even for women who demonstrate the necessary skills and attitudes for senior positions, there remains a strong social sense that the needs of children and spouses take precedence over career growth. It does not ‘feel’ right for many of these women to move into those positions when there are costs to the family. That men do not feel that same agony is not due to any inherent sex-based wiring, but it is due to the way social expectations become part of the ‘felt’ structure of personal decision-making. One cannot rationally break a pattern built into the brain over decades of nurture and social interaction. It becomes the very way one thinks, the structure of emotion built into one’s decision-making apparatus.

Constantly rewarded social training and expectation of nurturing behaviour, once lodged in the neural structures of the brain, are very hard to eradicate. The result is that while a woman may ‘will’ to lead, without the luck of an unusually supportive social environment (as is sometimes found among very wealthy families), she will find her own will frustrated by a brain that cannot perceive or engage the world with the hard edges necessary for senior leadership. She will hobble herself with unconsciously driven and socially supported finely honed nurturing capacities and self-doubt, guilt and lack of hope regarding conditions that require process-based assertion and organizational rigour. Her male colleague, with equal education, competence and experience, will instead build on the foundation of the long-term support and unconscious expectations of family, friends and colleagues to become the instrumental-thinking and driven achiever who makes it to the top.

While the social-brain-driven characteristics of a woman’s experience identify the problem, they also speak to a possible solution. The existence of brain plasticity and the possibility of women joining together to consciously review and revise their actions in communities of support mean that most women can make significant strides in attaining the required type of brain performance. Few women can do it on their own, but the very social programming that guides women towards family can be used to guide women towards community and organizational leadership. The brain is subject to conscious review and peer interaction that slowly overrides and revises existing neural programming. Neurons are constantly changing, and if a woman is forced to be accountable to a change-oriented group of peers, her brain will begin the necessary work of laying down the neural pathways that make the desired thinking possible. Facing continual pressure to justify her behaviour and failures to act in terms of the needs of the organization, a woman will rapidly begin to develop the neural pathways that will create the capacity for stronger leadership.

It does not happen overnight. Just as the initial neural tracks were developed over decades, it takes decades of careful supportive work to transform the brain into something that easily handles new ways of thinking, can perceive the world in instrumental terms and makes the necessary very tough decisions that hurt and tear while leading to a better future for all. Brains are a matrix of possibility shaped by experiences and social expectations. Change the experiences and social expectations, especially change them deliberately and with careful accountability, and the brain becomes a new set of possibilities. Women can fully hold down all the top jobs in industry and society if they set their eyes upon them and do the hard and long-term work necessary to jointly shape their brains to take them.

The first major obstacle to change is guilt. Guilt, as noted, is the single most powerful emotion shaping the decision process. Women have been trained to feel guilty when trading off the well-being of children, spouse and family for the well-being of cause, organization or society. As women move forward into organization...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I: Self-Identity, Nature and Nurture
• Part II: The Cost of Leadership on the Self
• Part III: Interplay between Structure and Agency
• Index