The use of feminist supervision practices, which was unique to women and to men that self-identified as either homosexual or bisexual, created a resistance to traditional concepts of gender roles and other issues of sexism and led to a greater awareness of these issues (Szymanski 2005). An awareness of this fact can be very useful for leaders and their team members in a variety of situations.
Issues of gender are not the only inequalities that need to be kept in mind for any practical leadership attempt or scholarly discussion to succeed/have merit, however. Oppression based on systems of cultural, racial, and socioeconomic hierarchies (as well as others) also persist in modern society, and have much in common with issues of gender disparity in many regards (Nelson et al. 2006). At the same time, cultural and racial oppression may outstrip gender-based oppression in terms of the degree to which they are felt by women in certain areas and certain communities, which demonstrates the need for a heightened sensitivity to the various types of oppression and their potentially complex interactions for many individuals (Nelson et al. 2006). Leaders that fail to take the multicultural, multigendered, and multiracial aspects of modern groups into account are almost certain to alienate certain individuals in the group, and potentially create other organizational problems.
Synthesis
Nelson et al. (2006) suggest that possessing the courage to not know the answer is an important step to effective leadership in the feminist multicultural perspective, and this is related in certain ways to the concept of communal leadership as identified by Scott and Brown (2006). The patriarchal framework that tends to be oppressive of other cultures and genders, then, is actually most effective when these oppressive constraints exist, as when the overall framework changes to one of sensitivity to individual differences, agentic leadership ceases to be as effective (Scott and Brown 2006). Feminist theory actually leads to better leadership in this regard, then.
The fact that feminist leadership also influences attitudes towards feminist theory...
The increased collaboration and diminished oppressiveness that are cited as a part of feminist and female approaches to leadership are certainly seen as preferable to the continued oppressions of the established patriarchy, but this seems to run the danger of eventually becoming as closed off and ultimately as oppressive as the patriarchy, though in other ways (Nelson et al. 2006; Scott & Brown 2006). For now, the perpetuation of feminist leadership perspectives can be seen as a generally good thing, leading to greater efficiency through a greater level of collaborative teamwork, but a watchful eye must be kept on the development of such leadership to ensure it remains non-oppressive.
Conclusion
An explicit awareness of the perspective from which or in which one is operating can help to forestall the development of that perspective into a system of prejudice. It is generally held as a hope that the collaborative, non-oppressive, and ultimately more efficient aspects of the feminist approach to leadership will become ubiquitous, yet this ubiquity can lead to a reduced explicit awareness of the perspective. In order to retain the directly practical benefits of feminist leadership, it will be essential to continually return to the increased objectivity of objective research recommending the specific traits that create these benefits.
References
Nelson, M.; Gizara, S.; Hope, A.; Phelps, R.; Steward, R. & Weitzman, L. (2006). "A feminist multicultural perspective on supervision." Journal of multicultural counseling and development 34, pp. 105-15.
Scott, K. & Brown, D. (2006). "Female First, leader second? Gender bias in the encoding of leadership behavior." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 101, pp. 230 -- 42.
Szymansi, D. (2005). "Feminist Identity and Theories as Correlates of Feminist Supervision Practices." The counseling psychologist 33, pp.…
