Comparison

Gender Differences in Leadership Styles

Meta-analytic research has found slight but significant gender differences in leadership styles. Eagly & Johnson (1990) found that women tend to practice an interpersonal style focused on employee morale and welfare, while men tend to practice a task-oriented style focused on accomplishing tasks; these differences were less pronounced in organizational studies of actual leaders. Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen (2003) found that women tended to exhibit characteristics of transformational leaders, while men were more likely to be transactional leaders. The differences are not absolute; for example, women were found to use reward-for-performance methods more often than men, which is a component of transactional leadership. Overall, the observed differences were relatively small.

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Updated 2026-05-27

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