“Feminine” leadership can be described as an approach to executive management that uses skills and behaviors commonly associated with women, but which might just as easily be deployed by men: emotional intelligence, transparency, relationship building, flexibility, inclusiveness, and a focus on personal growth.¹ “Masculine” leadership, on the other hand, has long been standard in most organizations and is characterized by a hierarchical, confident, “command and control” approach to tasks and decisions.
The two styles are complementary, management experts insist,² and the effectiveness of each varies with many factors, including the size and purpose of the organization and the political and economic landscape. A masculine style would be appropriate for an emergency rescue operation, for example, while the feminine approach would be effective for getting public buy-in on a development project. However, as the working world changes and businesses become increasingly global, the feminine leadership style is emerging as effective for building motivated and cohesive teams and for global organizations with diverse, remote staff using rapidly evolving technology.³
Mixed signals
In the United States in 2021, a record number of Fortune 500 CEOs were women. However, there were still more than 10 times as many companies run by men. Moreover, upper management remained predominantly white. In 2021, white women held almost a third (32.6%) of all management positions, while women of color held a drastically smaller share: Latinas, 4.3%; Black women, 4.3%; Asian women, 2.7%.⁴
Globally, the share of women in senior management rose to 31% in 2021. Ninety percent of companies worldwide had at least one woman in a senior management role. The Fortune Global 500 reported 23 women CEOs in 2021, including six women of color.⁵ In addition, the proportion of women chief financial officers and chief information officers increased.
Since 2021, however, women have moved into CEO positions at a glacial pace. In June 2023, the number of women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had stalled at just 10.4%. And women made up just 8% of CEOs in the S&P 500 last year, according to the CEO Magazine. (Read more in “Women in STEM: Perceptions Vs. Realities,” in the SWE Magazine Conference 2024 issue.)
Moreover, men who are corporate officers and board members have nine times more decision-making power than women because they typically own more stocks and thus have more voting rights.⁶
Women in the United States Workforce

Women’s ways
As women’s share of the most senior leadership positions fluctuates, any discussion of a feminine leadership style must be undertaken cautiously; it is easy to slide into the assumption that certain concerns are somehow the natural province of women. According to Catalyst, a nonprofit whose corporate members are dedicated to creating welcoming workplaces for women, this kind of stereotypical thinking has historically relegated women executives to the “caretaking” spots in companies and on corporate boards. These might include roles in marketing, human resources, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Men, meanwhile, occupy the more powerful, “take charge” slots, such as technology officer, strategic planning, and financial oversight.⁷
If women have developed a distinctive leadership style, it has been, in part, out of necessity. A feminine leadership style arises not from biology, but because certain strategies enable women to get things done. For women who have less positional power in an organization and lack the authority that comes from simply being a man, collaboration and inclusion help them move forward, and cultivating a reputation for honesty and integrity might help a woman keep her job. When women are numerically in the minority, learning to read a room is a very useful skill.
The reality is that everyone brings their life experience to their work. Most women have caregiving experience, so the agility and flexibility, the intuitive thinking, and the commitment to something outside themselves that caregiving demands will typically be part of their leadership style.
And when women do rise to the top, they often confront a notorious double bind: pressure to be considered competent by adopting a stereotypically masculine leadership style at the expense of being likeable. On her website blog, author and executive coach Sharon Melnick, Ph.D., called this stance “being agentic” — that is, taking charge and directing people. “Research shows that leaders are evaluated on two dimensions: warmth and competence,” she said. “For men the combination of these traits has little effect. Yet women have to be seen as warm for their competence to be taken seriously.”⁸
In other words, women leaders must be shape-shifters; in the course of one day they may be running a team meeting in a feminine way and taking command of a floundering project in a masculine way.
Women Outscored Men on Most Leadership Competencies
According to an analysis of 360-degree reviews during the COVID-19 pandemic, women were rated higher on most competencies.

This double bind has driven many women leaders to steer clear of the either/or, feminine versus masculine dilemma, opting to lead with authenticity; that is, bringing their true selves to work. They have discovered that this choice makes them more effective, not less.
One example is Ursula Burns, the first Black woman to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She began at Xerox Corporation as a mechanical engineering intern in 1980 and moved into management in 1991. She managed several Xerox divisions and served as CEO from 2009 to 2016. She led Xerox through the Great Recession and spearheaded an acquisition that transformed the company and saved it from bankruptcy.
In a 2024 interview conducted when she received a 2024 Page Center Award for Integrity in Public Communications, Burns reflected on how she negotiated authenticity over her long career at Xerox. “I got a lot of pushback to change the way I talked — I’m from New York City. And my hair — a lot of pressure [was put] on me to change that.” Burns did some soul searching about what was most important to her. She said, “I have done a lot of conforming — compromises are part of life — but I was very clear about what I would not change. If God wanted me to be a white man, I would be one. But I’m not. I’m meant to be Ursula. I think we need to change the groups that so many people don’t fit into, not the people who don’t fit in.”⁹
Reliable in a crisis
A 2020 Zenger Folkman study compared men’s and women’s leadership effectiveness before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers looked at a global database of 360-degree assessments of 454 men and 366 women. Women outperformed men both before and during the pandemic.
In addition, women performed better than men on 13 of 19 competencies that measure leadership effectiveness. The biggest gender gap was in “takes initiative,” a trait that has traditionally been associated with men leaders.10 (See the chart above.)
Women Were Rated as More Effective Leaders Before and During COVID-19
Based on analysis of 360-degree feedback data between March and June, women’s scores were even higher during the first wave of the pandemic.

Political leadership
Women in elected office are among the most conspicuous women in leadership positions. Many — like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Angela Alsobrooks — become household names. But the United States is a long way from achieving gender parity in all levels of government. Numbers matter. In elected office as in business, barriers to entry mean fewer leadership opportunities for women.
As of Nov. 21, 2024, the percentage of women in the U.S. Congress stood at 28.4% — 125 in the House and 25 in the Senate.¹¹ This percentage has increased by about 1% per year since 1971, with slightly larger jumps in 2018 and 2020. According to the 2024 Gender Parity Index, women in the United States hold just one-third of all elected positions at all levels of government.¹²
Just before the midterm elections in 2018 when a record number of women were running for U.S. Congress, the Pew Research Center examined how men and women viewed women’s leadership in politics and business. The difference between men’s and women’s views on the number of women in high political office and in top executive positions is almost identical. Men (44%) appeared to be more comfortable saying that discrimination is a factor in underrepresentation of women in top executive positions than in high political office. The majority of respondents (57%) said men and women have different leadership styles.
For all six measures of corporate leadership examined in the Pew study (see chart “On several aspects of corporate leadership, many give women the edge“), the majority of respondents said there was no difference in the performance of women and men. Those who saw a difference said women were better on five measures, especially “creating a safe and respectful workplace.”
Women outperformed men on all measures except “being willing to take risks,” a trait typically associated with a masculine leadership style.
Among those who say men and women have different leadership styles, most say neither has a better approach
Percent saying that when it comes to the leadership styles of people in top positions in business and politics …

No substitute for experience
Discussions with a feminist and women’s studies academic, a global technical recruiter, an entrepreneur and business consultant, and a leadership development coach revealed how an array of leadership styles can be effective in a variety of situations.
Dorothy C. Miller, D.S.W., served as the inaugural director of the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women at Case Western Reserve University, or CWRU, from 2002 to 2013. Now emerita director of the center, Dr. Miller is also a writer and an advocate for people with hearing loss. She earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in social work at Columbia University. She has taught social policy with an emphasis on women’s economic well-being, social work, and women’s studies at the University of Maryland, Rutgers University, Wichita State University, and CWRU.

“Leadership is guiding people on a path, helping them succeed, and inspiring them to focus intentionally and enthusiastically. I have observed all kinds of women in different situations, and I do think that women in general lead differently than men, mostly because men are more secure in their jobs. Women’s values tend toward empathy and sympathy, and they bring that to the workplace.”
— Dorothy C. Miller
Dr. Miller is realistic about leadership behavior. “The queen bee exists,” she said. “And I’ve seen both women and men in high positions jockeying to get ahead and being jealous and competitive. People at work do what they believe they need to do in order to survive, and that includes women who adopt masculine leadership styles.
“But then some women figure out how to teach, do their research, relate well to their colleagues, and be kind to their students. I’d call these women feminist, rather than feminine; they look out for other women and have empathy for their employees.”
On several aspects of corporate leadership, many give women the edge
Percent saying women/men in top executive business positions are better at each of the following:

Organization size to some extent determines what kind of leadership is possible. Dr. Miller ran the Mather Center in a collaborative, inclusive way. “Our purpose was to share ideas and to empower young women, encourage them to be creative, and teach them how to do this kind of work,” Dr. Miller said. Students and staff helped screen job applications and interview job seekers, created programming, and participated in most decisions. “I was in charge of a very small unit. I think a larger organization would have been harder to run that way.”
In a workplace that values participation, it can be a shock to employees when the director makes a decision without consulting them. “I did get pushback sometimes,” said Dr. Miller. “I would just say, ‘That’s my decision; this is not a democracy.’ I think pushback from below happens more often to women than to men.”
Under her guidance, the Mather Center worked closely with the campus chapter of Women in Science and Engineering Roundtable, known as WISER. “The women in that group had amazing leadership qualities,” said Dr. Miller. “They started Take-a-Student to Engineering Day for fifth graders and raised money for engineering students in India. We did try to empower them to deal with other engineering students who thought women were admitted to the school only because of affirmative action. I remember thinking, ‘One of these young women is going to be president of the United States.’”
Munira Loliwala is vice president for strategy and growth at TeamLease Digital Private Limited in India, a specialized staffing services organization providing tech and non-tech talent to global capability centers and the information technology industry. Working from Mumbai, Loliwala is responsible for business growth and for building relationships with customers worldwide. She has an undergraduate degree in economics and a graduate degree in business management and marketing. She speaks Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, and English. Before joining TeamLease, Loliwala worked for other talent acquisitions firms in India and the United Arab Emirates.

“To me, leadership is about delegation that fosters growth; the more you delegate, the more you elevate others and enhance your own skills. Leadership can’t be taught; it has to be learned. You can only improvise and build on your skills as a leader. Cultural and national differences can significantly shape leadership styles.”
— Munira Loliwala
Loliwala said an increase in STEM education and innovative approaches friendly to women in India and the Middle East are crucial to creating employment and leadership opportunities there. In the past, traditional approaches to STEM there have not resulted in significant participation by women because they promoted physically demanding work in field jobs, sometimes required travel, and offered crowded working conditions with a lack of hygiene and safety.
However, thanks to digitization and automation, women engineers can now work from offices, home, or elsewhere on projects using data and analytical engineering. This has created opportunities in software design and development, data engineering, and product management. “Due to a combination of cultural, environmental, and economic factors in STEM job opportunities for women globally, fields such as health care, design, and automotive have experienced an increase in women STEM employees,” Loliwala said. And men have become more willing to work on women-led teams and are more responsive to women in decision-making roles, she said.
“I kind of agree that bringing more women into an organization can change the culture to become more inclusive and empathetic,” she said. “Ultimately the dynamics change. Also, the more men are educated about inclusiveness and diversity, the easier it will be for women to move up the ladder.”
Fundamental to Loliwala’s leadership style is the idea that leadership is not about power you keep for yourself. Leadership confers power that is best “unbundled” and passed along to your teams. Second is her conviction that you cannot always lead the same way. Every situation calls for a different leadership style. Finally, she advises leaders to be “good ancestors,” to make sure they leave behind a legacy of good.
“My leadership qualities come predominantly from my ancestors. Both my parents, being born leaders, inculcated in me the confidence to lead. My father has been a businessman all his life and portrays some of the best leadership qualities.”
Theresa Y. Cummings is CEO of Cummings Consulting & Management LLC, in Alpharetta, Georgia, founded in 2004. She specializes in executive coaching, leadership training, and retention and engagement. She has worked with AT&T, General Electric, the Boeing Company, Honda Manufacturing, and NASA.
“We help individual contributors become great managers,” Cummings said. “There’s a huge gap between the skill set you need when you’re working on your own and the one you need when you’re primarily working with and through other people.” Cummings, who has a degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA, said, “Our sweet spot is helping engineers who are moving into management.”

“I’ve been told I’m very tough to work for, but that I’m fair, and we have fun. My approach is that we’re here for results — to learn, to get things done, and to have a good work experience. You have to show your team that serious side and also demonstrate that you will go to the hilt for them. I think women leaders are more nurturing and more intuitive than men — quicker to pick up on things that aren’t right.”
— Theresa Y. Cummings
In 1996, Cummings joined Harley-Davidson, where she was ranked in the top 5% of facilitators at the company. She was the first Black supervisor the company ever hired at its York, Pennsylvania, assembly plant. When she moved from South Carolina to Pennsylvania, she said, “A lot of people thought, ‘she’s so young, she’s so inexperienced, she’s female … and oh, she’s African American.’
“I got used to being a woman in a man’s world. I worked in the automotive industry for 20 years and in one facility, it was 96% men.”
Cummings said she had to reassure herself: “I’m smart. I can get results with my skills and my knowledge.” Although her engineering background gave her credibility, she soon learned that the key to leadership success was people skills — building relationships, making connections, and as she phrased it, “finding my own ways of communicating and really flexing my style.”
Cummings describes herself as extroverted and this has turned out to be an asset. “There were challenges at the beginning. I would walk into a room and people didn’t know how to take me because of what I looked like. I would start talking and connecting, and they would warm up to me and relax. They had this shop talk, but I could do that, too,” she said.
From 2002 to 2004, Cummings served as a human resource director of training and organizational development for Simmons Bedding Company, in Atlanta. She managed a $3 million training budget and increased employee involvement and satisfaction so much that Simmons was voted one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For — for the first time in the company’s 100-year history.
“I will tell you, the higher you go, the job becomes more political,” she said. “For a while I felt I had to dress a certain way and explain things a certain way to fit in. I almost got sick from trying to be someone I’m not. I’ve learned the art of being my true, authentic self, and now I am confident going anywhere and talking to anyone.”
Fabian Dattner is a leadership coach, author, social entrepreneur, and CEO of Dattner Group, a consultancy in Melbourne, Australia, that focuses on workplace strategy, organizational change management, leadership development, and a women’s leadership program called Homeward Bound that culminates in a 21-day expedition to Antarctica. Homeward Bound aims to “elevate the visibility of women leading with a STEMM background.” Mother Earth needs her daughters is one mantra of the organization.

“Leadership is not a person; it’s a practice. It’s a journey of engaging and inspiring human beings to a purpose greater than yourself. If management is a methodology, then leadership is an art. And I don’t think anyone is born a leader. I think you develop the capability both by having role models of great leadership and discovering for yourself what genuinely mobilizes human community.”
— Fabian Dattner
Dattner speaks widely about the role of women in building a sustainable future. She said women’s leadership is crucial to solving the planet’s most pressing problems, such as the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and habitat degradation. She is reluctant to say there is a clear “capability difference” between men and women but cites the research by Zenger and Folkman mentioned previously that shows women excel in most capabilities essential to leadership.
“So, can we assume,” she asked, “that there is something about the way women lead that is going to impact the way we solve the planet’s most urgent issues? Yes. If you see where leadership is failing globally, it is our heartbreaking inability to collaborate. It’s not that the solutions aren’t there, it’s that leaders don’t collaborate for solutions.”
With more than 40 years of leadership development to her credit and multiple awards for her work, Dattner has observed that in small groups, such as those with seven or eight men and two or three women, the dynamic more often than not mirrors how men prefer to operate. The women become competitive to fit in. However, when Dattner observes and/or coaches women on their own, a very different way of leading emerges. “They are more collaborative, open, inclusive, and legacy-minded,” she said.
Within her company, Dattner founded the Compass leadership training program to “build courage in women to lead,” she said, admitting such an effort is difficult and uncomfortable. “We are needed at the leadership table … to hold to what we stand for and learn how to lead within a paradigm that is struggling to change.”
A “lover of science,” Dattner contends we are living in an era that has “shifted from fact to belief.” Yet science holds many solutions to global challenges. “We hold the view that women leading together in numbers is good in every context. By nature, they will care for equity and inclusion.”
Leadership Priorities Evolve with Time
Launched in 2010, the Society of Women Engineers’ Advance Learning Center replaced a series of professional development webinars that SWE offered with a more formalized learning management system that offers live, on-demand, and eLearning courses on a wide variety of topics. Some of the courses help engineers earn continuing education units and professional development hours that count toward license renewal.
Reviewing just the titles of the professional development courses offered in the early days of the ALC reveals much about the topics on the minds of women engineers in the 2010s. What Your Male Mentor Won’t Tell You! The Secrets to Power and Success, and A Woman’s Guide to Succeeding by Competing, produced in 2013, speak to women’s drive to not just survive but thrive in the male-dominated field of engineering.
Skirt Strategies: The Intuition Model of 16 Feminine Traits, and Women as Leaders: What’s Going On? — both from 2013 — point to the idea that women have their own style of leadership that needs to be acknowledged, appreciated, and nurtured.
Damaging Phrases Women Use in the Office and What not to Wear, both produced in 2017, offered advice on how women present themselves in the office, where many engineers were likely to be working at the time. Then came the acute years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many employees moved to remote work, followed by the hybrid arrangement many engineers enjoy today. At least four current courses help women manage hybrid — and often globally dispersed — teams. Examples include Lead from a Distance: Virtual Work Essentials, and Leading Exceptional Hybrid Teams. A new course added in 2024, Building Rapport: The Lost Art and Science of Effective Workplace Relationships, acknowledges that meaningful connections are necessary across all cultures, working environments, and communications styles.
Some challenges women face have persisted over time. Two courses on overcoming impostor syndrome were produced in 2013, and current course offerings still include the topic. Leaping from Impostor Syndrome to More Self-Efficacy, and Get Out of Your Own Head: Understanding and Unraveling Stereotype Threat both seek to help women get past their own sense that they are not good enough and do not belong in engineering.
Overall, however, recent offerings strike a more positive note, showing women how to take the reins of their own careers by seeking mentors and sponsors, maintaining a growth mindset, and boosting their influence. Among the many new offerings just announced, three in particular — Role Models Matter; Mindshift: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Learn, Change, and Grow; and Elevate Your Impact: Communicate with More Clarity and Confidence — all suggest that women are seeking to move their careers forward into more influential leadership positions.
Discover all of SWE’s Advance Learning Center course offerings at https://advancelearning.swe.org/.
Footnotes
- Martinot, Christophe, “Feminine Leadership Explained: The ‘Masculine’ and ‘Feminine’ Sides of Leadership.” Management 3.0 Leadership Blog, March 2, 2023, Management 3.0.com.
- (Martinot 2023)
- (Martinot 2023)
- Catalyst, Catalyst Research, “Women in Leadership,” March 1, 2022. (Quick Take).
- (Catalyst 2022)
- Catalyst. “The Corporate Gender Power Gap.” Catalyst and ExecuShe, Feb. 23, 2023, www.catalyst.org
- Catalyst 2023. “The Corporate Gender Power Gap,” a joint Catalyst and ExecuShe panel discussion, Feb. 23. www.catalyst.org
- Sharon Melnick, “How to Counteract the Likability Penalty Leadership Bias,” Nov. 2, 2018, www.sharonmelnick.com
- Ursula Burns, The 2024 Arthur W. Page Center Awards for Integrity in Public Communication, YouTube, March 24, 2024.
- Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, “Research: Women are Better Leaders During a Crisis,” Harvard Business Review, Dec. 30, 2020.
- Center for American Women and Politics, “Women in Elective Office 2024.” New Brunswick, New Jersey: Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
- Courtney Lamendola and Steph Scalia, “2024 Gender Parity Index,” a report of RepresentWomen, July 2024.