Leadership - a matter of gender?

The long-lasting and possibly not very useful question of whether women’s and men’s leadership are similar or differ has not led to conclusive answers. This chapter discusses different stances of the no-difference and the gender-stereotypcal views and the problems in investigating the subject—including complications in how to determine and motivate whether there is a difference in women’s and men’s ways of leading. We argue that it is not necessarily very fruitful to seek general patterns in terms of gender and leadership and argue that understanding gender and leadership calls less for a strict adherence to a specific theory and law-like patterns than an ability to consider a variety of key aspects and dynamics and a variation of tendencies and empirical outcomes