Cultural Shift

When I think about the ideal leader, I think about the characteristics that person should possess: keen outlook, self-sufficient, empathetic, and not about the gender that ideal leader should possess. Despite my belief that gender shouldn’t be a, or if at all only a little determining factor in someone’s ability to be/have power; from our class discussions and just common trends, it actually holds true that gender is very much intertwined with leadership. As many people have already mentioned, time and time again, women seem to be absent from the leadership roles.
Like many of my fellow classmates have already mentioned, in almost all fields, ranging from politics to medicine, women seem to be lacking from leadership roles. As I can hopefully assume, however, women are just as capable as men for these leadership roles and yet this favor towards men in power are startling. I would like to blame this uneven representation solely on the fact that despite recent progress, there still is the stereotypical image of women as weak, frail or rather “bitchy” when put in leadership roles, however I acknowledge that this is not the only reason for the lack of women leaders. Like others have mentioned, it is quite possible that although today many women are career-oriented, a majority of women also have other priorities such as families and children. Thus it is quite possible that the companies assume that almost all women would rather focus on the family as their priority than work and then never give them the chance for leadership roles. However, this assumption that women do no want leadership roles can obviously be quite problematic for the women who wish to focus on their career or even have leadership roles at work while maintain a family. But the question rises: how does society allow equal leadership opportunities for those women who want it. Like our previous discussions with women’s suffrage acts, it sometimes requires a mass movement, massive support in order for the opportunity to be open in the first place. Thus, like many of people have mentioned, there needs to be a cultural shift in order to give those equal opportunities for the women who desire it.