The School of English and International Studies

Beijing Foreign Studies University, China

Gender Identity and Leader Self-awareness: A Research on Chinese University Female Student Leaders

WANG Yifan

Paper ID : WCWS 2018 A 367

✤ Introduction

Status Quo & Problems

Theoretical Framework

Research Question & Hypotheses

✤ Methodology

Sampling & Participants

Apparatus

Procedure

✤ Results

Survey: Questionnaire

Interview

✤ Discussion

✤ Conclusion

Structure

Introduction

Introduction —Status Quo &Problems

The ratio of male and

female students in Beijing

Foreign Studies University

(BFSU)— 1:3

23%

77%

Male Female

from Data Center of Beijing Foreign Studies University

Introduction —Status Quo &Problems

The ratio of male and

female student leaders in

student organizations of

BFSU— 9:16

36%

64%

Male Female

from Youth League Committee of BFSU

Introduction —Status Quo &Problems

The ratio of male and

female student leaders

(senior-level management)

in student organizations of

BFSU— 4:5

48% 52%

Male Female

from Youth League Committee of BFSU

Introduction —Status Quo &Problems

✤ Women are largely stuck in the middle-level management rank.

Ratio of male and female leaders in senior-level management is 87:17.

When transiting from middle to senior level, the dropping-out percentage of

women in China is 52.88%.

— few women become leaders

— women are holding themselves back in their career

Introduction —Theoretical Framework

✤ Leader Self-awareness Theory: the self-perception towards one’s leadership has great influence on leader behaviors.

Women tend to have less self-awareness why women?

✤ Gender Role Performance Theory: people construct their gender identity

through playing the role given by society.

Leader is not women’s role not internalize leader identity

Introduction —Theoretical Framework

✤ Gender identity: Androgynous Theory

—Bem Sex-Role Inventory

Masculine (High masculine identification)

Feminine (High feminine identification)

Androgynous (High identification with both)

Undifferentiated (Low identification with both)

Example from Masculine Scale

Example from Feminine Scale

from up to down: self-supporting, sticking to ones beliefs, independent, arbitrary

from up to down: enthusiastic, elegant, philoprogenitive, gentle

Introduction —Research Questions & Hypotheses

✤ RQ1: What is the general gender identity type of female student leaders ?

✤ RQ2: What are the relation between leader self-awareness and gender identity ?

✤ RQ3: What are the causes to the relation between leader self-awareness and gender identity?

✤ H1: Female student leaders show higher identification with masculine than feminine.

✤ H2: Female student leaders’ self-awareness are positively correlated to their identification

degree with masculine.

✤ H3: Female student leaders’ self-awareness are negatively correlated to their identification

degree with feminine.

Methodology

Methodology —Procedure

✤ Phase I: Survey

Questionnaire

— Bem Sex-Role Inventory and Multifactor Leadership

Questionnaire

Population

— female student leaders of student organizations affiliated to the

Youth League Committee of BFSU

Snowball Sampling

✤ Phase II: Interview

4 participants were chosen based on gender

identity categories.

Table 1. The Descriptive Statistics of Participants’ Organizations

sex composition

of student leaders

Results

Results —Gender Identity

✤ H 1

✤ Result: Female students

show lower

identification with

masculine than

feminine.

t(49)=-4.245, p < .01

Rejected

Results —Gender Identity

✤ RQ1: What is the type?

✤ Result:

Androgynous

Undifferentiated

Non-sex-typed Categories

Results —Gender Identity & Leader Self-awareness

✤ H2

✤ Result:

r(50) = .424, p< .01

moderate

positive

correlation

✤ H3

✤ Result:

r(50) = .43, p< .01

moderate

positive

correlation

Rejected

Result —Interview

(transcript was translated from Chinese)

✤ Image of

typical leader:

descriptions

agree with

masculine

traits

Participant Description gender

Masculine

(leaders should ) have the ability to give orders, and others will follow them, when

others understand or do things wrong, they will correct them in time.They may

force others to do that, or may not. That’s not limited by gender. (determination,

independence)

both

Feminine I once experienced a monitor, a kind of domineering person. authoritarian female

Androgynous

…they keep decribing a kind of women to me: first you should be elegent, not extremely beautiful… not ugly to be sure. The feeling of contemplation and

steady is important… Like an iceberg, no matter what a good female leader do or

speak, she only shows an aspect of her, and what beneath that is unknown.

female

Undifferentiat

ed

Others don’t really take me as a leader… I think hierarchy is important. The

leader I can think of now is Ma (The androgynous participant), an outgoing and

energetic person. both

Blue for Masculine, Red for Feminine

Result —Interview

(transcript was translated from Chinese)

✤ Image of Ideal

leader:

Androgynous

traits

Participant Description

Masculine Not that arbitrary，having their own ways to achieve their goal. Also be in a

good relationship with superior and subordinate. Again gender is not

important, if you can get things done.

Feminine

First, you should make everyone cooperate with each other without conflicts.

Seound, She or he should have authority. You can just let everyone ignore you and

your orders. Third, you cannot be too rigid and stick to your leader position. You

should have some interactions with your members. Another thing is you should listen

to others opinions. Don’t be stubborn.

Androgynous In my opinion, there are two kinds of leaders. One is a woman who is very

powerful, like Merkel. ，Another kind is the kind of women who work hard and

also clever and outgoing. They have good attitudes and being flexible.

Undifferentiated

An ideal leader is a combine of both genders for me, but it is somehow vague.

You should have what we traditionally require, like authority and power. The

Caring aspect is also important. You should know how to allocate and how to

improve efficiency.

Blue for Masculine, Red for Feminine

Result —Interview

(transcript was translated from Chinese)

✤ Leader

self-awareness

personal ability

encouragement

from parents

personal

interests

Participant Description Factors

Masculine Not quite important, in my department, minster or vice-minister is

not important. As long as you can get things done，I can also

follow your order. It is not that you must follow my instruction. personal ability

Feminine I don’t have the feeling of being a leader, not really… he leader

identity, not quite essential for me…Parents don’t want me to be outstanding as a leader, I means, they never encourage.

no encouragement

from parents

Androgynous

Being a leader is such a enjoyment for me! My mother said that if

you were not good at academy, then being a leader. Being a leader

is significant for me.

My parents had set some models for me since I was young, for

example, Fu Ying*. My parents admire her a lot. My mon keeps

telling me that I looks like her, but I cannot tell where. Just like that,

they keep describing a kind of woman to me.

encouragement from

parents

Undifferentia

ted

Not very important… I feel it is somehow useless, except I met lots of friend in department and got some credits. Personally, I am not

quit interest in being leader.But my family do encourage me to be

leaders ，That’s only a personal interest issue.

personal interests

*Fu Ying: the vice chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China National People’s Congress

Participant Description factor

Masculine

All my monitors and teachers who in charge of my class were

women.

If a woman can reach such a position, she must be much more

competitive and qualified than the man in the same position. I don’t believe the saying that gender has effects on leadership. But

because most of people always judged female leader unfairly,

women can only be successful by showing both strong and weak.

That’s a way to satisfy the expectations of others.

interaction in

school

social norms

Feminine

If the leader is a boy, others may be more obedient to his instruction，Male leaders always seem more authoritative.

Girls, girls can be more reliable, at lease I felt female leaders are more

reliable.

interaction in

school

social norms

Androgynous

But stronger I showed, less ballots I got. Then my mom told me that it

still took time for people to get used to female leaders. Being too

aggressive or ambitious is not suitable for girls，so she wanted me to

hide my ambition a little bit. So, it is very important for female leaders

to couple hardness with softness.

interaction in

family

social norms

Undifferentiated

It might because the most people I get in touch with are girls. I do feel

gender does not have great influence on people’s leadership at birth, but nurture does count. Like the old-fashioned ideals that women

should return to their family, it might block women’s way.

interaction in

school

social norms

✤ Influence factors

：

school

family

society

— The requirement

of good leadership

styles

— The pressure

from the society

Discussion

Discussion —Gender Role Performance

✤ Gender Role Performance Theory:

play the role given by the society

— p lay the role as leader (male role)

construct gender identity accordingly

— identification with masculine

reinforce the role

— better leader self-awareness

masculine

leader self-awareness

— positive correlated (H2)

feminine (rejected)

leader self-awareness

— negative correlated (H3)

Discussion —Gender Role Performance

✤ Ideal Image of Leader

Having both masculine and

feminine traits

Androgynous role

✤ Gender Role Performance Theory:

play the role given by the society

— play the role as leader (male role)

construct gender identity accordingly

— identification with masculine

reinforce the role

— better leader self-awareness

— identification with both

masculine and feminine

— better leader self-awareness

Discussion —Gender Role Performance

✤ Leader self-awareness

personal lead ing ability

personal interests

family encouragement

✤ Personal Experience

Conclusion

Conclusion —Major Findings

✤ Leader: Androgynous Role

✤ Leader self-awareness is in

positive correlation to the

identification degree of both

masculine and feminine

✤ Leader self-awareness is

influenced by personal

experience

✤ Avoid ing the

stereotype: male role

✤ Encouraging female

students to be leaders

Conclusion —Limitation and Delimitation

✤ Limitation

Within-group feature effect in

BFSU cannot be fully

controlled .

Snowball sampling may cause

community bias.

✤ Delimitation

Sex-typed gender identity

theory is not applied

— avoid vagueness

— correlation stud ies

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