Nicola Patterson

Envisioning female entrepreneur: leaders anew from a gender perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the convergence of female entrepreneurship, women in management and leadership fields from a gender perspective to bring a gender consciousness to the development and construction of the emerging entrepreneurial leadership theory base.Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual paper that argues for the convergence of the entrepreneurship and leadership fields to enable an interchange of ideas, and learn from the developments within each field from a gender perspective. Whilst scholars have recently begun to explore the concept of entrepreneurial leadership, these early developments have remained gender blind, gender defensive and gender neutral.Findings – A central argument is that female entrepreneur leaders experience social role incongruity. In order to be perceived by their followers as credible and legitimate entrepreneurial leaders, women are expected to manage their dual presence across the symbolic spaces of femininity and masculinity, doing gende...

‘Woman as a project’: Key issues for women who want to get on

The following chapter explores senior women’s key issues for women who want to get on as managers and leaders. We present analysis drawn from a wider qualitative study of 81 senior women who hold UK FTSE 100/250 executive/non-executive director and/or influential leader positions, set against a background assumption that ‘male-defined constructions of work and career success continue to dominate organizational research and practice’ (O’Neill et al., 2008, p. 727). The senior women participants have achieved a traditionally ‘masculine strategic situation’ (Tyler, 2005, p. 569) in breaking through the gendered glass ceiling (Morrison et al., 1987) and in doing so may be viewed as no longer ‘the organizational second sex’ or ‘others of management’ (Tyler, 2005, p. 572). The study, following Ellemers et al. (2012) and Chesterman et al. (2005), therefore explores experiences of women in high places who have overcome gendered barriers to achieve senior leader positions, and advances Terjesen et al.’s call for ‘truly innovative research into the female directors’ experiences’ currently lacking in the literature (Terjesen et al., 2009, p. 332).