Women Striving for Leadership: The Role of Follower Perceptions and Organisational Structure

Scholars have contributed much to identifying general factors that may hinder women from assuming leadership at the workplace, such as sex differences in attitudes and behaviours, a lack of masculine characteristics, or gender stereotypes that characterise women as high on communal traits (i.e., warm, sensitive), but low on agentic traits (i.e., competitive, dominant). Nevertheless, we know little about the micro (verbal behaviour during meetings) and macro (organisational structure) factors that impact whether women emerge as leaders. Therefore, across four chapters, the present dissertation looks at the behavioural (micro) processes underlying a lower leader emergence and endorsement of women (Chapters 2 and 3), and organisational structure (macro) that impacts the intention of women to apply to leadership roles (Chapters 4 and 5).