Women's Leadership Effectiveness within the Technology Industry: How Gender Roles and Emotional Intelligence Impact Followers' Evaluation

This study explored the influence of female leaders' gender roles and emotional intelligence on how followers perceive their leaders' effectiveness within the technology industry. Previous research has demonstrated that women hold far less leadership positions than men, and this may be due to specific challenges posed by a traditionally masculine environment as well as the double bind that women face in fulfilling both feminine gender and masculine leadership stereotypes simultaneously. Followers rated their female leaders on gender roles (BSRI short-form), emotional intelligence (TEIque short-form), and leadership effectiveness (LMX7). Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to determine if leadership effectiveness could be predicted from gender roles and emotional intelligence. This study found that while gender roles have no significant impact, emotional intelligence is a very strong predictor of leadership effectiveness and may actually account for the variance that gender roles would contribute to the model.