Abstract
This paper considers the impact of gender differences in motivation and values on women’s participation in management and senior executive roles, together with the extent to which women who do attain these roles resemble their male peers in terms of their motives and values. The results of a large, quantitative study using the Hogan Motives, Values and Preferences inventory (N = 7571) are presented. These indicate that women do differ significantly from their male peers on 9 out of 10 motive and value scales but that the differences between senior women and their non-managerial female colleagues are less than those between senior men and their non-managerial male colleagues. As a result, key gender differences increase rather than decreasing at senior levels.
Highlights
Despite the fact that women in the US are awarded 57% of bachelor’s degrees, 60% of master’s degrees, 51% of doctor’s degrees1 and they occupy 51% of all managerial and professional roles (Stone, 2013) and the majority of middle management roles (Cheung & Halpern, 2010), their participation at senior executive level remains strikingly low
This paper considers the impact of gender differences in motivation and values on women’s participation in management and senior executive roles, together with the extent to which women who do attain these roles resemble their male peers in terms of their motives and values
The first step was to conduct a one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) for all participants with the 10 MVPI value scales as the dependent variables and gender as the independent variable
Summary
Despite the fact that women in the US are awarded 57% of bachelor’s degrees, 60% of master’s degrees, 51% of doctor’s degrees and they occupy 51% of all managerial and professional roles (Stone, 2013) and the majority of middle management roles (Cheung & Halpern, 2010), their participation at senior executive level remains strikingly low. Women currently represent 4.8% of Fortune 500 CEOs (Catalyst Organization, 2014) and 14% of Fortune 500 Executive committee members (Barsh & Yee, 2012). Within the UK FTSE 100, only 4% of CEOs, 6.9% of executive directors and 15.6% of Executive committee members. S. Davies et al 28 are women (Vinnicombe, Doldor, & Turner, 2014). Davies et al 28 are women (Vinnicombe, Doldor, & Turner, 2014) The reasons for this continued low penetration of women into the C-suite are complex and have been extensively researched. A recent meta-analysis of primarily North American data over a period of nearly 50 years concluded that men and women do not differ in innate leadership effectiveness (Paustian-Underdahl, Walker, & Woehr, 2014)
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