Women and leadership – 20 years later: a semantic connotation study

Abstract

English

We investigated the semantic connotations of the concepts woman, man, leadership, manager and businesswoman (N = 101) on 25-item semantic differentials. Our study was a replication of Kruse and Wintermantel (1986), who had found that the concepts man, leadership and manager formed one cluster, whereas businesswoman and woman each remained separate (woman being particularly far off the main cluster). The authors concluded that leadership was still male. We were now interested in the changes in semantic connotations of those concepts over the last 20 years. In addition to influence of participants' sex, we were also interested in how professionals differed from students in their representations of these concepts. Results suggest that (a) clusters have changed, with manager, leadership and businesswoman now forming the main cluster, and (b) influence of professional status was more pronounced than influence of participants' sex. The observed changes in concepts lead us to the carefully optimistic statement that societal gender roles seem to be changing in the direction of more representational and also more factual gender equality.

French

Sur un différentiel sémantique de 25 termes les auteurs ont étudié les connotations sémantiques des concepts femme, homme, leadership, manager et femme d'affaires (N = 101). Cette étude est une réplication de celle de Kruse et Wintermantel (1986), qui avait montré que les concepts homme, leadership et manager constituaient un seul groupe, alors que ceux de femme d'affaire et femme restaient isolés (femme se situant particulièrement à l'écart du groupe principal). Kruse et Wintermantel en avaient conclu que leadership restait un concept masculin. Dans cette étude, les auteurs s'intéressent aux changements des connotations sémantiques survenus pendant les 20 dernières années. Au delà de l'influence du facteur 'sexe du participant', ils s'intéressent également aux différentes représentations de ces concepts pour des personnes en activité et des étudiants. Les résultats obtenus suggèrent que (a) les groupes ont changé, le groupe principal comprenant maintenant manager, leadership et femme d'affaire et (b) l'influence du facteur 'statut professionnel' est plus forte que celle du facteur 'sexe des participants'. Les changements observés au niveau des concepts conduisent les auteurs à affirmer, avec un optimisme prudent, que les rôles par genre dans la société actuelle semblent changer et que la tendance est à une égalité de genre au niveau des représentations et donc aussi au niveau des faits.

Keywords

Gender Language Leadership Semantic differential Stereotypes Women

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