5 Reasons To Recover Feminine Traits And Become A Top Female Leader
Photo by Rodolfo Clix on Pexels
Why women tend to be masculinized in today's companies’ structures?
Allow me to assert this boldly: the scarcity of authentic female leaders is real. Evidently, within corporate settings, leadership roles often conform to stereotypical male attributes, with the top management predominantly rewarding traits traditionally associated with men:
- Assertiveness
- Strength
- Ability to dominate
Why did this happen? Because most probably, the corporate structure was born in a patriarchal or paternalistic society and was created according to the military organisational model. This model was the only one that worked and was widely accepted by the male community.
This structure was consolidated at a time when women were massively excluded from military and managerial life.
The same organizational language often refers, directly or indirectly, to war. Have you ever noticed these expressions?
“Competitive attack”, “price war”, “take-over”, “action plan”, etc.
Today, women are increasingly ready to take the leadership of companies or governments, still often conforming to this male leadership model—denying their femininity, which is very powerful.
Why is it crucial to reclaim feminine traits in female leaders?
Because NOW is the time. Women need to express themselves in all their creative power, maintaining their identity and rejecting obsolete behavior patterns.
Following a female (and not exclusively male) model, female leaders create new forms of organization, processes, structures, technologies, and, above all, new values.
But why then do women, who become leaders in companies, behave a little less like women? It is probably because, to gain managerial positions, they think they have to follow those considered successful and purely male behaviors.
In reality, for any organization’s success in the current historical period (be it corporate or governmental), it no longer makes sense to distinguish the two elements of masculinity and femininity as opposites. Instead, we should consider them as two polarities of a single entity.
Five Characteristic Feminine Traits In Female Leaders
What are the intrinsic characteristics of the feminine trait? We can simplify and define five:
- Embrace: women know how to welcome and take care of the people she loves, the people in the community, and so on, whether they are men or women, and the know-how to ‘nurture’ them. The values of love and sharing inspire her actions. See also the Vesta archetype.
- Creativity: women can create an impact, both physically and emotionally, in the short and especially in the long term. She takes actions by instinct and intuition, guided by intellectual knowledge and acquired skills.
- Perseverance: women are tenacious, patient, and loving, like a mother who guides her children and works tenaciously for the well-being of all—feelings of resilience guide her actions.
- Empathy: women can connect emotionally with other people, can establish bonds, even at a distance, and create lasting relationships. They tend to seek harmony and well-being in all situations.
- Practicality: women are capable of ingenuity and can find practical solutions to everyday problems. Ancient organizational skills (managing home and all related activities) guide her actions.
Today, it makes sense to recover these five characteristics and use them as powerful tools to build modern leadership that is also highly effective and profitable.
We don’t need any more masculinized women leaders. The time for conforming to old patriarchal standards is over.
Women have excellent interpersonal skills, making them more democratic than men because they create participative working environments.
They know how to defuse tensions within the team. They also know how to “calm” the minds of those collaborators and colleagues who are not used to female leadership and therefore question skills and competence.
Female Leaders Without Using Power
Another winning feature of modern female leadership is that women can be leaders without using power: women have often had to climb the career ladder without using power, either because they did not have it or because it was not socially accepted.
If women embraced their feminine traits completely, this characteristic would be even more evident and compelling.
In various aspects of leadership, women have an advantage over men, so why continue to act like men when we can make full use of these skills?
Energising, aligning, outward-looking, expressing emotional intelligence, rewarding and giving feedback, team building, being tenacious are all typical aspects of women and winning leadership characteristics. It is a fact.
If the system remains based on male values, women tend to ‘masculinize’ themselves to get ahead. If, on the other hand, women turn the tables and use their skills consciously, then they can change the system and set up different organizations and structures.
And we all gain because these organizations are socially oriented, which is the key to the success of any organization in our time, especially given the profound global change we are experiencing.
Women vs Women
Gender stereotypes are still widespread; their effects are persistent and extend to all levels and situations.
So it is crazy that women create these conditions of toxic masculinity and continue to imitate and perpetrate obsolete male behaviour.
A recent study claims that more than 70% of women say they feel bullied by their female colleagues.
Thus, not only do women embrace old, masculine patterns of behaviour, but they also prefer to crash other women (68% female targets, 32% male targets).
Women, more than men, exert overwhelming pressure on each other to appear ‘successful’, so to speak and are strongly allied with men in power.
These considerations show how many women are complicit in perpetuating the patriarchal order. The only way out is to break free from this mental conditioning and liberate our feminine nature. To do this, we must first be aware of these mechanisms (mental, emotional, and social).
- Have women been poorly treated compared to men? Yes.
- Are they generally less violent than men? Yes.
- Have women contributed to this situation? Yes.
- Are women victims? They are only victims of themselves.
I think we have to work on ourselves to recover our identity and our feminine energy.
We should not take behaviour patterns and expressions for granted. We need to analyze our environment and our condition. Nor do we have to take it for granted that we are women.
Let’s find out what it means and enhance our feminine traits to reorganize the company, society, and the world.
To break free from gender stereotypes and flourish in a bias-free work environment, consider learning how to create your online business. Join our enlightening Free Workshops and discover strategies to overcome ingrained social conditioning, harness your potential, and thrive in the dynamic digital economy. Click here to get access now.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrea Granelli and Odile Robotti, articles in Harvard Business Review Italy