Empowering Token Women Leaders The Importance of Organizationally Legitimated Credibility

• Published in: Psychology of women quarterly Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 209 - 222
• Main Authors: Yoder, Janice D., Schleicher, Thomas L., McDonald, Theodore W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.1998; Cambridge University Press, etc; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Credibility; Empowerment; Femininity; Feminism; Feminist psychology; Gender roles; Group interaction; Group work; Leaders; Leadership; Legitimacy; Masculinity; Organizational structure; Organizations; Psychology; Students; Tokenism; Universities; USA; Women; Womens studies
• ISSN: 0361-6843; 1471-6402
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.1998.tb00151.x

We hypothesized that, in a masculine task, only token women leaders who were empowered through position (by being appointed leader) and expertise (trained with task-relevant information) and legitimated by a male experimenter as credible would be more effective in influencing the performance of their all-male groups than appointed-only and appointed-trained leaders. Thirty women undergraduates each led a small group of male students on a moon survival task. The hypothesis was supported. Videotapes of group interactions revealed that appointed-trained leaders interrupted group members and used tentative tag questions in failed attempts to share their task-relevant knowledge. In addition, group members reported the most dissatisfaction with appointed-trained leaders who, without legitimacy, violated diffused gender roles by presuming to be expert on a masculine task. The importance of the organizational empowerment of token women is underscored.