Feminine leadership and the ethics of sexual difference

Abstract

This paper provides a critical reading of feminine approaches to leadership which are lauded for having the potential for women to rise into leadership positions by valorising particular feminine and feminized traits. We question the reliance of leadership ethics on feminized ideals such as care, empathy and relationality where much of this literature relies on rigid, oppressive gendered dualisms which reinforce the feminine other. Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference is developed as a means to challenge the symbolic status of women in leadership and leadership ethics. The paper then moves to consider the intercorporeal dimensions of leadership that facilitate ethical encounters with the other and progress the ways in which women in leadership are thought and the ways women respond to being un/recognised, de/valued and supported/discriminated. We conclude by suggesting different strategies by which the feminine may be rethought and the oppression of difference be identified and politically and practically addressed. Turning to Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference suggests that interventions for addressing in/equality is an ethical challenge for all genders where ethics emerge at the site of corporeal relations between bodies and require a more ethical openness to otherness.