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Sex Roles, Vol. 45, Nos. 11/12, December 2001 ( C
°2002)
Gender Stereotypes of Leaders: An Analysis
of the Contents of Obituaries From 1974 to 1998
Christa Rodler, Erich Kirchler,1and Erik H¨
olzl
University of Vienna
The present study investigates changes in gender stereotypes by an unobtru-
sive method. Obituaries of deceased women and men in leading positions
as published in four German language newspapers between 1974 and 1998
were analyzed. Following a previous study (E. Kirchler, 1992), terms used
in the obituaries to describe former leaders were classified into 58 categories.
Frequencies of descriptions were analyzed with regard to leadership success,
stability of attributes, and person-orientation versus task-orientation. Results
show that gender images were dissimilar in content each of the years. In 1992
and 1998, however, female and male stereotypes became more similar.
KEY WORDS: gender stereotypes; leadership; management.
INTRODUCTION
Stereotypes provide a base for leader–subordinate interactions
(Martinko & Gardner, 1987). From this perspective, subordinates’ percep-
tions of their leaders’ characteristics are essential factors for acceptance
and followership (Mitchell, 1995; Robbins, 1998). According to leadership
attribution theory, leadership success is not exclusively defined by the com-
petencies of leaders; it is also facilitated by social reality as constructed by
subordinates (Calder, 1977; Pfeffer, 1992). This conceptualization demands
to take the subordinates’ perspective because their assumptions, percep-
tions, attributions, and behavior affect leadership efficiency. With regard to
gender, this approach focuses “...not on how men and women actually dif-
fer, but how people think that they differ” (Deaux, 1984, p. 110). In assigning
1To whom correspondence should be addressed to University of Vienna, Department of Psy-
chology, Universitaetsstrasse 7, A-1010 Vienna, Austria; e-mail: erich.kirchler@univie.ac.at.
827
0360-0025/01/1200-0827/0 C
°2002 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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828 Rodler, Kirchler, and H ¨
olzl
attributes to male and female leadership performance, observers are biased
by subjective social realities and by stereotypes. Biological gender is a key
item of information on which attributions and judgments are based.
According to the female gender role, women are considered to have
more social qualities (e.g., they are perceived to be emotional, sensitive, sup-
porting, gentle, kind, and affectionate), whereas men are assumed to possess
more agentic qualities (e.g., independent, assertive, competitive, daring, and
courageous; Brody, 1997; Carli & Eagly, 1999). “Agency” is the dominant
label in the male stereotype, whereas “communality” is the attribute most
assigned to females. Typical male leaders are said to emphasize goal at-
tainment, whereas their female counterparts emphasize social relationships
(Ashmore, DelBoca, & Wohlers, 1986).
Whether or not leaders are seen as successful depends heavily on fol-
lowers’ implicit theories on leadership (Bass, 1990). There is strong evidence
for the existence of a leadership prototype (Lord, 1985). This prototype of
a “good leader” was found to be cloaked in masculine terms. Extensive re-
search of Schein (2001) confirmed, on an international level, the hypotheses
that managers are perceived to possess characteristics commonly ascribed
to men. Whereas men are perceived as meeting prototypical characteristics,
women are expected to be different (Banaji & Greenwald, 1995; Butterfield
& Grinell, 1999; Kirchler, 1997; Powell & Butterfield, 1989).
The aspiration to be successful or trying to fit into the image of a leader
prototype puts pressure on women to adopt “a masculine style” (Eagly &
Johnson, 1990; Gardinger & Tiggermann, 1999). But as the role congruity
theory of prejudice toward female leaders (Eagly & Karau, in press) states,
incongruence between the female gender role and the traditional leadership
role accounts for less favorable perceptions of female leaders and their lead-
ership behavior. Female leaders who adopt stereotypical masculine styles
(e.g., autocratic or directive styles) face role conflicts (Heilman, Block, &
Martell, 1995). They also receive more negative evaluations, are called “iron
ladies,” and perceived as aggressive, manipulative, and domineering leaders,
in comparison to men who are not penalized for adopting a feminine style
(Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992; Heller, 1982).
With respect to leadership style concepts (well known in terms of consid-
eration and initiating structure, concern for people vs. concern for production
and profit, or person-orientation vs. task-orientation), person-orientation
seems to be of particular interest because it is traditionally associated with the
female gender role. There is increasing evidence for the “feminization
of management” (Fondas, 1997). Social skills, such as sharing responsibil-
ity, helping and facilitating the development of subordinates, and building
networks of relationships, are characteristics that recently have become im-
portant factors in describing effective leadership (Vinkenburg, Jansen, &
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Gender Stereotypes of Leaders 829
Koopman, 2000). They are also praised as the crucial characteristics that will
make the difference between effective versus successful leaders in the future
(Weinert, 1998). Rudman and Glick (2001) point out that this might result
in a backlash for female managers. Agentic, competent women are often
seen as dominative and therefore less nice than identical presented men.
When a “feminized” managerial job demands that applicants possess agen-
tic characteristics and at the same time exceptional communal skills, women
again will face discrimination. It is relevant, therefore, to look at changes of
descriptions of female and male leaders with respect to leadership style in
terms of person- versus task-orientation.
Usually people do not only evaluate level of performance but also make
attributions of causality for a performance. Deaux (1984) argues that causal
attributions can be linked to expectations for performances and can be un-
derstood in terms of more general stereotypes held of women and men.
Causal attributions also determine whether a specific performance is seen
occurring accidentally or as likely to be repeatable in the future (attribu-
tions to stable causes; Nieva & Gutek, 1980). Good female performance or
success was often found to be perceived as due to effort and good male per-
formance as due to ability (Burton, 1992; Rimm, 1998). Characteristics used
to describe male leaders should therefore more often refer to stability, than
those used to describe female leaders.
The present study investigates changes in how female and male leaders
are perceived during the last decades. Several reasons foster the general as-
sumption of change: First, the images of female leaders should have changed
due to increasing numbers of females at least in middle management posi-
tions. Second, the female stereotype should be particularly dynamic due to
the greater changes in the roles of women as compared with those of men
(Diekman & Eagly, 1999). In other words, it can be assumed that while fe-
male stereotypes have changed over the past decades, male stereotypes have
remained quite invariant.
Investigations of changes in the social images of female and male lead-
ers should rely on unobtrusive methods rather than using questionnaires or
interview techniques that often lead to results biased by social desirability.
Kirchler, Wagner, and Buchleitner (1996) and Laugheed (2000) strongly rec-
ommend indirect measures because direct questions could hide stereotypes
that might still exist. In this study, we investigated the texts of obituaries of fe-
male and male leaders printed in newspapers and signed by the organization
that the deceased had led. Descriptions of leaders through verbs, adjectives,
nouns, and parts of sentences in obituaries are indicators for stereotypes held
by the persons who describe their deceased leaders. Obituaries in newspa-
pers may also reflect a more general view in what is accepted as “politically
correct” and provide information about what is deemed appropriate to say
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830 Rodler, Kirchler, and H ¨
olzl
about a deceased person who had held a high level position. Because people
tend to idealize deceased persons, the images are, without doubt, positively
biased. Although these biases do not allow drawing evaluative conclusions
about gender stereotypes, it is possible to detect qualitative differences in
content. If at a certain time, consensual beliefs about the characteristics of
female and male leaders differ, the words used to describe these leaders
should also differ.
Kirchler (1992) analyzed the content of obituaries of female and male
leaders, published in daily newspapers in the years 1974, 1980, and 1986. He
found that attributes were highly dissimilar. Although male managers were
continually described over the years using success related attributes such as
intelligent, knowledgeable, experienced, outstanding instructors, unselfish
opinion leaders with an enviable entrepreneurial spirit, etc., in 1974 and
1980 women were described as venerable and likeable superiors. In 1986, the
female leaders’ dominant attributes shifted to courageous and committed.
The present study extends Kirchler’s investigations (Kirchler, 1992) to the
years 1992 and 1998. Moreover, the linkage between stereotypes, success,
stability attributions, and leadership style is addressed.
METHOD
Obituaries written by the organization in which a deceased leader had
been employed and published in newspapers in the years 1974, 1980, 1986,
1992, and 1998 were analyzed. Four newspapers published daily in the
German language were investigated. One newspaper is published in Austria
(Die Presse), two in Germany (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, S¨
uddeutsche
Zeitung), and one in Switzerland (Neue Z ¨
urcher Zeitung). These newspapers
were selected because they usually contain obituaries placed by private per-
sons but also ones placed by business firms and public organizations. In this
case obituaries are death notices in which the loss of a person is not only
announced but the person is also described by a few sentences.
For the present study, 26 issues of each newspaper were selected per
year according to the following selection principle: for the years 1974, 1980,
1986, 1992, and 1998 the Monday issues of the second week of the year were
chosen, the Tuesday issue of the fourth week, the Wednesday issue of the
sixth week, the Thursday issue of the eight week, etc.
Overall, 894 obituaries reported explicitly on persons who had been
working in leading positions: 39 pertained to deceased females and 757 to
deceased males. A person was defined as leader when he or she had been a
director or head of a business firm, school or other public organization, chair
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Gender Stereotypes of Leaders 831
Table I. Frequency of Obituaries Pertaining to Female and Male Leaders by Year of
Publication in Four German Language Newspapers
Female leaders
Publication year Male leaders First search Second search Total
1974 169 7 29 205
1980 127 4 18 149
1986 181 9 18 208
1992 142 11 15 168
1998 138 8 18 164
Total 757 39 98 894
Note. Data from 1974 to 1986 were taken from a previous study (Kirchler, 1992).
of a department, etc. Since the number of the obituaries of female managers
was very small, a second search was made for further obituaries of only
female leaders in all issues of the above cited newspapers not considered in
the first round. This second data search was necessary to provide a larger
sample for analysis. The second search yielded 98 additional obituaries on
female leaders (Table I).
The contents of the obituaries were analyzed. All verbs, adjectives,
and nouns were identified. Overall, 4057 semantically relevant words were
counted. In the obituaries of the years 1974–1980 a total of 2365 words were
counted; for the years 1992 and 1998 a total of 1692 words were counted.
The words published in obituaries in 1992 and 1998 were classified into
58 categories by two coders who were trained to use the categorization
scheme established in the previous study (Kirchler, 1992) in which the words
from the years 1974–1986 had already been categorized. The percentage of
interrater-concordance was 93%. In case of dissimilar classification, coders
discussed their categorization until they reached agreement. The descriptive
categories and overall frequencies for men and women are enlisted in the
Appendix in English and German language. Due to small number of female
obituaries it was not possible to explicitly consider type of company.
RESULTS
Content Analysis of Obituaries
First, the frequencies of the 58 descriptive categories for female and
male leaders were computed by year of observation. Male managers were
described as persons with a strong personality (5.6%), as experts (5.2%), as
being companionate (4.5%), committed (4.3%), energetic (4.2%), indefati-
gable (4.2%), outstanding (4.0%), and successful (3.6%). Female managers
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832 Rodler, Kirchler, and H ¨
olzl
were praised most often for being committed (6.2%), for having had a strong
personality (5.8%), for having been a pioneer (4.7%), energetic (4.4%),
loyal (4.4%), indefatigable (4.4%), caring (4.2%), venerable (3.8%), hu-
mane (3.8%), and successful (3.8%).
The cross-classified frequency table for attribute categories and male
and female leaders by year was subjected to a correspondence analysis
(Greenacre, 1993), which is based on chi-square tests and allows for the
exploration of the structure of qualitative data. Correspondence analysis is
an exploratory technique designed to analyze simple two-way and multiway
tables containing some measure of correspondence between the rows and
columns. The results provide information that is similar in nature to those
produced by factor analysis techniques.
The categories included were the 49 categories that appeared in the
obituaries more than 20 times (approximately 0.5% of total frequencies).
The correspondence analysis yielded a two-dimensional solution: the first
dimension explained 39%, the second 18% of variance (the remaining di-
mensions explained less than 10% of variance). Because the contribution
of row points adds up to 1 and a total of 49 row points were used, only
those row points contributing more than 1/49 =0.02 were analyzed further.
Twenty-two descriptive categories meeting these criteria were included
in the second round of correspondence analysis. Table II shows frequencies
for the female and male samples.
The second analysis yielded one dimension explaining 51%, and a sec-
ond dimension explaining 21% of variance. The third and fourth dimensions
explained 10% each. Figure 1 shows only the two-dimensional results be-
cause the third and fourth dimensions did not contribute to the understand-
ing of the attributes assigned to female and male leaders over the time.
The graphical representation shows attributes that describe male and
female managers over the years. Although females were described quite
differently than males in the years 1974 to 1986, the differences decreased
sharply in 1992 and 1998. Figure 1 also shows that female images have shifted
over the years, whereas changes in male images are less apparent. Dimen-
sion 1 ranges from attributes like servant, committed, professional, and hu-
mane to intelligent, efficient, skillful, experienced, and expert. The second
dimension is, at the one pole, described by expert, experienced, professional,
intelligent, and, at the other pole, by venerable. It can be summarized that
men were always described as mainly professional, experienced, experts, and
more often described with attributes reflecting interpersonal orientation in
the 1990s. Women in the 1970s were mainly described as venerable, in the
1980s they became work-oriented and courageous, in the 1990s professional
and committed.
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Gender Stereotypes of Leaders 833
Table II. Frequency of Descriptive Categories (Included in the Correspondence Analysis) by Gender of Leaders and Publication Year
Male leaders Female leaders
Categories 1974 1980 1986 1992 1998 Total % 1974 1980 1986 1992 1998 Total % Total %
Amiable 9 8 10 11 11 49 1.5 4 1 5 2 2 14 3.1 63 1.7
Committed 5 13 23 51 47 139 4.3 0 1 6 11 10 28 6.2 167 4.5
Companionate 34 33 26 26 26 145 4.5 2 3 0 3 1 9 2.0 154 4.2
Courageous 50520120.4114 3092.0210.6
Efficient 117200200.6130 0040.9240.6
Experienced 30 14 25 10 19 98 3.0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0.2 99 2.7
Expert 43 32 41 30 23 169 5.2 0 2 1 2 3 8 1.8 177 4.8
Honest 15 11 14 7 4 51 1.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.0 51 1.4
Humane 13 13 20 20 27 93 2.9 1 1 2 4 9 17 3.8 110 3.0
Indefatigable 40 32 36 15 14 137 4.2 5 5 2 3 5 20 4.4 157 4.2
Intelligent 38 19 24 3 8 92 2.8 3 0 1 1 3 8 1.8 100 2.7
Likeable 23266190.6300 0030.7220.6
Loyal 27 18 23 2 9 79 2.4 9 7 4 0 0 20 4.4 99 2.7
Open-minded 5 5 7 15 10 42 1.3 2 0 0 1 6 9 2.0 51 1.4
Pioneer 14 9 8 26 16 73 2.3 5 0 3 8 5 21 4.6 94 2.5
Professional 3 2 5 21 28 59 1.8 0 0 0 5 2 7 1.5 66 1.8
Servant 01199200.6000 1120.4220.6
Skillful 19 13 13 5 3 53 1.6 2 0 3 1 1 7 1.5 60 1.6
Sociable 8 3 10 1 0 22 0.7 2 0 2 0 1 5 1.1 27 0.7
Unselfish 8 11 14 0 1 34 1.0 4 0 3 1 1 9 2.0 43 1.2
Venerable 76537280.91222 10173.8451.2
Work-oriented 8 4 11 10 4 37 1.1 6 0 2 1 0 9 2.0 46 1.2
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834 Rodler, Kirchler, and H ¨
olzl
Fig. 1. Correspondence analysis of the frequencies of 22 descriptive categories
by gender and year of publication.
Success, Stability, and Leadership Style
The next step entailed analyzing leadership success as well as stabil-
ity of attributes in terms of Weiner’s (Weiner, 1986) attribution theory, and
leadership style, namely task-orientation versus person-orientation, inher-
ent in the descriptions. Four psychologists in human resource management
positions at various business firms, who were blind to the study, but trained
to the theoretical concepts, rated each category. Ratings were made with
regard to attributes indicating (a) leadership success as well as (b) stability
of attributes, (c) task-orientation or (d) person-orientation. If three of the
four raters agreed, attribute-categories were judged to indicate leadership
success, stability, and task-orientation or person-orientation.
Categories rated as indicating leadership success were the following:
active, committed, courageous, creative, decision-maker, efficient, entre-
preneurial spirit, esteemed, experienced, expert, farsighted, innovator,
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Gender Stereotypes of Leaders 835
Fig. 2. Success-related attributes in obituaries over time. Note. Relative frequencies
of attributes related to success; lines show the 95% confidence intervals.
intelligent, open-minded, opinion-leader, pioneer, professional, respected,
responsible, skillful, sociable, strong personality, and successful. Overall, half
of the descriptive categories were related to leadership success: Female lead-
ers were described by attributes indicating success in 47% of the cases, male
leaders in 53% of the cases. Figure 2 illustrates the changes in success-related
attributes over the years. In the year 1974, 35% of the descriptive words for
females were categorized as success-related, whereas in the male sample,
53% of the attributes were related to success. In 1998, the numbers for both
male and female leaders were 57%. The 95% confidence intervals show that
relative frequencies of success-related attributes differed significantly only
in 1974. In the following years, women were described with approximately
equal numbers of success-related words.
Characteristics rated as stable were the following: being committed,
decision-maker, entrepreneurial spirit, farsighted, humane, intelligent, pro-
fessional, reliable, responsible, skillful, sociable, strong personality. Table III
shows that approximately one quarter of the descriptions were rated as be-
ing success-related and stable. The confidence intervals indicate a significant
difference in 1974, where only 12% of descriptions for female leaders, but
22% of descriptions for male leaders were rated in this way. No gender dif-
ferences were found for the following years. Over time, female managers
were more often described as successful in 1998 than in the 1974, and the
stability of success-related attributes increased. For male leaders, the per-
centage of success-related and stable descriptions remained at the same
level.
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836 Rodler, Kirchler, and H ¨
olzl
Table III. Relative Frequencies of Descriptions Related to Leadership Success and Stability
Descriptions Leaders’ gender 1974 1980 1986 1992 1998 M
Success-related Male 0.53 (0.49–0.56) 0.49 (0.44–0.53) 0.53 (0.49–0.57) 0.55 (0.51–0.59) 0.57 (0.53–0.61) 0.53 (0.52–0.55)
Female 0.35 (0.26–0.43) 0.37 (0.23–0.50) 0.47 (0.35–0.58) 0.59 (0.49–0.69) 0.57 (0.47–0.66) 0.47 (0.42–0.51)
Success-related Male 0.22 (0.19–0.25) 0.19 (0.16–0.23) 0.22 (0.19–0.25) 0.23 (0.20–0.27) 0.27 (0.24–0.31) 0.23 (0.21–0.24)
and stable Female 0.12 (0.06–0.17) 0.17 (0.07–0.28) 0.24 (0.14–0.34) 0.31 (0.22–0.40) 0.27 (0.18–0.36) 0.22 (0.21–0.24)
Attributes Male 713 483 750 609 606 3161
total Female 121 52 75 97 99 444
Note. Twenty-three categories were judged as success-related, 10 as both success-related and stable. Numbers in parentheses give 95% confidence
intervals.
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Gender Stereotypes of Leaders 837
With regard to leadership style, the overall results show that more de-
scriptive words in the obituaries were rated as indicating task- than person-
orientation. Over the years, a significant increase in the percentages of words
related to person-orientation was observed for the male leaders. Because of
the small numbers of obituaries for female leaders, confidence intervals are
larger and changes in the percentages for female leaders are not signifi-
cant, although the numbers indicate increased task-orientation in the 1990s
(Table IV).
Figure 3 visualizes the results concerning person-orientation and task-
orientation. The graphical presentation follows the managerial grid, which
was used first by Blake and Mouton (1964) to capture the extent to which
a leader is person-oriented and task-oriented, assuming that managers per-
form best if they are high in both dimensions. Over the years, male leaders
were described as task-oriented in 43% of the cases. In 1992 and 1998, a
clear shift towards person-orientation can be observed.
Fig. 3. Person- and task-orientation in obituaries over time. Note. Relative
frequencies of attributes related to person- versus task-orientation; 95% con-
fidence intervals are given in Table IV.
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838 Rodler, Kirchler, and H ¨
olzl
Table IV. Relative Frequencies of Descriptions Related to Person- and Task-Orientation
Descriptions Leaders’ gender 1974 1980 1986 1992 1998 M
Person-orientation Male 0.22 (0.19–0.25) 0.23 (0.20–0.27) 0.24 (0.21–0.27) 0.32 (0.28–0.35) 0.33 (0.29–0.36) 0.27 (0.25–0.28)
Female 0.26 (0.18–0.34) 0.25 (0.13–0.37) 0.27 (0.17–0.37) 0.26 (0.17–0.34) 0.34 (0.25–0.44) 0.28 (0.23–0.32)
Task-orientation Male 0.41 (0.37–0.44) 0.42 (0.38–0.46) 0.44 (0.40–0.47) 0.44 (0.40–0.48) 0.42 (0.38–0.46) 0.43 (0.41–0.44)
Female 0.31 (0.23–0.39) 0.38 (0.25–0.52) 0.39 (0.28–0.50) 0.46 (0.36–0.56) 0.42 (0.33–0.52) 0.39 (0.35–0.44)
Attributes Male 713 483 750 609 606 3161
total Female 121 52 75 97 99 444
Note. Fourteen categories were judged as indicating person-orientation, 17 as indicating task-orientation. Numbers in parentheses give 95%
confidence intervals.
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Gender Stereotypes of Leaders 839
DISCUSSION
Top leadership is still essentially male dominated, and the number of
women in top positions remains negligible worldwide (Adler, 2000;
Davidson & Burke, 2000). This imbalance between women and men in
leadership positions is mirrored in the ratio of female obituaries to male
obituaries. The vast majority of the total obituaries pertained to males and
only a small percentage pertained to deceased female leaders, which at first
sight corresponds to the small percentage of women in top management
positions. However, it can also be argued that the mortality rate of female
leaders today reflects the statistics of the past and in the years ahead the
relative figures will change. Konrad, Ritchie, Lieb, and Corrigall (2000) con-
ducted a meta-analysis of 242 samples on sex differences and similarities
in job attribute preference and found that job attributes had become more
important to women and girls, women’s aspirations had risen, and gender
barriers to opportunity had declined. If more women reached higher man-
agement levels in the 1980s and 1990s than in the 1970s, the percentages of
women and men mirrored in the obituaries should be less distorted.
Have gender stereotypes of leaders in the last quarter of a century
really changed and if so, in which direction? It was hypothesized that in the
1970s and 1980s female leaders represented not only a minority, but their
images were quite different than male images. Females were perceived and
expected to be warm and expressive, whereas males were tough experts,
task-oriented, and dominant. Although studies on stereotypes that directly
asked participants for differences between female and male leaders did not
reveal significant differences in the late 1980s, indirect, unobtrusive measures
showed prevailing differences (Kirchler, 1997; Kirchler et al., 1996).
What has clearly been shown by the contents of the analyzed obituar-
ies, is that while content of female images has changed considerably over the
past decades, male stereotypes have remained relatively invariant. First, as
Fig. 1 shows, the female stereotype has changed dramatically since 1974, from
mainly venerable, admirable, and loyal, to courageous and work-oriented,
to finally, 1998, committed and professional. The male stereotype remained
invariant from 1974 to 1986. In the 1990s it changed towards more person-
oriented attributes, such as humane and open-minded. In the years 1992
and 1998, the attributes used to describe deceased female and male leaders
came closer to each other. These findings are consistent with the observation
that roles of women and men have become more similar and that changes in
beliefs about women are highly dynamic (Diekman & Eagly, 1999). People
get more and more used to having a female leader at their workplace. In-
dependent of hierarchy level, stereotypes should fade because of greater
visibility of female leaders.
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840 Rodler, Kirchler, and H ¨
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Research on gender and leadership style has focused on gender differ-
ences. Men were and often still are evaluated more positively when scoring
high on the initiation dimension, whereas women are evaluated more
positively when scoring high on the consideration dimension (Bartol &
Butterfield, 1976). Eagly and Karau (1991) report that according to gen-
der stereotypes, men have a stronger advantage on measures of task-related
leadership, whereas female leaders have a stronger advantage on social fac-
tors of leadership. The effect decreased with duration of interaction between
members of a group, or between a leader and subordinates. In the present
study, descriptive words in the obituaries of female and male leaders were an-
alyzed with regard to task-orientation and person-orientation. The changes
in the direction of a more interpersonal style as indicated by the results from
the correspondence analysis were also visible in the further analyses, though
significant only for the male leaders. Men were described consistently task-
oriented over the years, and in the 1990s more person-oriented. Women
were described in the 1970s and 1980s by attributes that indicated neither
much task-orientation nor person-orientation. In the 1990s female leaders’
attributes seem to become more work-related. Overall there is a balance
between task- and person-orientation.
The relation of descriptions in the obituaries to success changed over
the years as well. According to the attributes used, men have always been
perceived as successful. The relative frequency of success-related attributes
in obituaries for females increased from about 0.30 to the same amount
found in obituaries of males (Fig. 2). In their analysis of obituaries in 1990,
Kirchler et al. (1996) still found gender differences in the percentages of
success-related, stable attributes and interpreted their findings as indicating
that both females and males are perceived as potentially successful leaders,
but although females are seen as motivated and struggling for success, men
are seen as solid experts who always knew and always will know how to
manage an enterprise successfully. In the present analysis, these differences
seem to have disappeared in the 1990s.
Because it has been shown by various studies that stereotypes have re-
markable stability (Deaux, 1993), results of the present study have to be
treated with caution. A growing awareness of stereotypical evaluations and
possibly also inappropriate qualitative differentiation between effective fe-
male and male leaders could result in changes of stereotypes. Data resulting
from the analysis of obituaries are not free of these biases and could therefore
also reflect obituary writers’ increasing sophistication about how they should
portray female leaders. Nevertheless the present study shows that changes
have occurred and it illustrates a methodology that allows capturing shifts
in stereotypical “portrays” over time. This is particularly relevant consid-
ering that stereotypes change very slowly and data on beliefs and opinions
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Gender Stereotypes of Leaders 841
over a longer period were rarely observed. Additional studies are necessary
to underpin the present findings. Also, contextual variables, such as type of
company the deceased male and female leaders had worked for or the occu-
pation should be considered explicitly. If an occupation is female dominated,
feminine personality characteristics and physical attributes are thought to be
more essential for success than masculine attributes (Cejka & Eagly, 1999).
According to the findings of this study, which is based on the assump-
tion that gender stereotypes are inherent in obituaries on female and male
leaders, traditional views seem to have changed. The increasing number
of women particularly in intermediate leadership positions, the decline
of gender barriers to opportunity, and the observable convergence of
gender images give rise to hope that stereotypes of leaders start to change.
APPENDIX
Descriptive Categories in English and German Language
English German original English German original
1 Active Aktiv 30 Instructor Lehrer
2 Admirable Hochachtungsw¨urdig 31 Intelligent Intelligent
3 Amiable Liebensw ¨urdig 32 Kind G ¨utig
4 Balanced character Ausgeglichen 33 Leader F ¨uhrer
5 Calm Ruhig 34 Likeable Beliebt
6 Caring F ¨ursorglich 35 Loyal Treu
7 Consensus-oriented Kompromissbereit 36 Modest Bescheiden
8 Committed Engagiert 37 Natural Tier-/Natursch ¨utzer
9 Companionate Kameradschaftlich 38 Open-minded Aufgeschlossen
10 Conscientious Pflichtbewusst 39 Opinion-leader Meinungsmacher
11 Convincing ¨
Uberzeugend 40 Organizer Organisator
12 Courageous Mutig 41 Outstanding Verdienstvoll
13 Creative Kreativ 42 Patriotic Patriotisch
14 Decision-maker Entscheidungstr¨ager 43 Pioneer Wegbereiter
15 Efficient T ¨uchtig 44 Professional Professionell
16 Energetic Kr ¨aftig 45 Regardful Umsichtig
17 Entrepreneurial Unternehmergeist 46 Reliable Zuverl ¨assig
spirit
18 Esteemed Gesch ¨atzt 47 Religious Religi¨os
19 Ethical Korrekt 48 Respected Angesehen
20 Experienced Erfahren 49 Responsible Verantwortungs-
bewusst
21 Expert Experte 50 Servant Diener
22 Fair Gerecht 51 Skillful F ¨ahig
23 Farsighted Weitblickend 52 Sociable Kontaktfreudig
24 Friendly Freundlich 53 Strong personality Pers ¨onlichkeit
25 Honest Ehrlich 54 Successful Erfolgreich
26 Humane Menschlich 55 Supportive Hilfsbereit
27 Indefatigable Unerm ¨udlich 56 Unselfish Selbstlos
28 Independent Unabh ¨angig 57 Venerable Verehrungsw¨urdig
29 Innovator Initiator 58 Work-oriented Arbeitsorientiert
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842 Rodler, Kirchler, and H ¨
olzl
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