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May 5, 2010International Education Men vs. Women, Part II<<<Go to Part I of International Education Men vs. Women This is Part II of the article and survey results on perceived effectiveness, strengths, and transformational leadership differences between men and women in senior international officer (SIO) or equivalent international education positions. SIO Representation Half of the SIO Men represented by the survey were from doctoral universities, while the majority of SIO Women were from both doctoral universities (37.4%) and liberal arts colleges (23.2%) combined. More details are included in the chart below.
Final Question (optional): How has this leader made a difference at your company or institution? There were 46 responses for SIO Men and 42 responses for SIO Women. For the purposes of this article, I grouped them by perceived effectiveness and drew out comments and descriptors. Now, let’s take a look, starting from the bottom and working up. Not Effective at all No SIO women were labeled as not being effective, and there were only two comments about the nine SIO men that fell into this category. “Brought a budget consciousness that hadn’t been in place before, which senior staff (the majority of whom are male) appreciate at this time. However, he does not have a study abroad background of the caliber that our institution needed.” “If anything he has had a negative impact due to his inability to manage people, money or himself.” Somewhat Effective
Effective
Very Effective
Summary Obviously, both men and women can embody all of the qualities above, regardless of their sex, and so it’s difficult to identify patterns. What I found interesting are the different perceptions of effectiveness, as they relate to descriptors, and the choice of words for the different sexes. For example, “decisions are made by him” (for a man) vs. “decisions made w/o consultation” (for a woman). It’s acceptable for a male to be described as someone who “demands high quality academics” and for a female as having “integrated study abroad with curriculum and teaching.” More than anything, this data makes me wonder how powerful gender really is in defining people’s expectations and perceptions? One very effective man “brought a new dimension of strategic thinking and global commitment” while a woman “brought about major changes that greatly increased the overall quality of the program.” A very effective man showed “positive leadership” while an equally effective woman “engaged leaders.” Words like grow, foster, encourage, and support were used more often to describe women. One very effective male SIO was described as a “role model” while an equally effective female SIO was a described as a “mentor” (different connotation). These results do not suggest that one sex is better than the other, as we all know there are good leaders and bad leaders among both. What they do tell us is both men and women are necessary and valuable to leadership, especially in higher education. Perhaps the SIO women in this survey have higher effectiveness ratings and more descriptors because the road to their position was narrower and longer than it was for the SIO men. Perhaps more research should be conducted to determine why women are overrepresented within certain International Education institutional categories but underrepresented in others. Last week, I forgot to mention the 30% Solution, a brilliant strategy which gained traction at the UN Beijing Conference in 1995. The 30% Solution is the critical tipping point where enough women at power tables can be heard and heeded, positively affecting policy decisions, changing the terms of the agenda, and impacting the style of achieving goals. According to Linda Tarr-Whelan, business and government does better when there is thirty percent women in leadership, and she has plenty of examples to back this up. I’m a believer…are you? Submitted by Wendy Williamson, Director of Study Abroad, Eastern Illinois University 2 Comments »RSS feed for comments on this post. Leave a comment |
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I have greatly enjoyed your survey findings, thank you for undertaking this project and sharing the results.
Comment by pamelaruiz8@hotmail.com — May 6, 2010 @ 01:12
I think leadership is fundamentally teaching. A leader must communicate information and enthusiasm. A leader is more effective when can demonstrate experience and share the fruits of that experience by sharing wisdom.
Comment by Successful Entrepreneur — April 8, 2011 @ 00:14