Women Seeking a Leadership Role in Society

Female gender identity, for historical and cultural reasons, has been and still is object of stigma. And discrimination against women and minority social groups (women, homosexuals, immigrants, young and old, sick and disabled) is entrenched in Italian workplaces. As shown by the studies conducted by the SDA Bocconi Diversity Management Lab, in Italian organizations those who get hired or promoted tend to be heterosexual young men, without children or family burdens and in a perfect physical condition. The Global Gender Gap Report, the indicator that measures gender equality in terms of participation in work, politics, education, and medical care in 145 countries around the world, ranks Italy at the 82^nd place in 2017, down from 50^th place in 2016.

In such a context, talking about female leadership means emphasizing the importance of the contribution that women can bring to organizations through the diffusion of identity skills such as relational skills aimed at inclusion, listening and dialogue without having to conform to the dominant group. Today being a woman and becoming a leader means first of all having the courage to move away from the conformist logic of the majority, nurturing a style of leadership and thinking where diverse actors build organizational scenarios in which each individual position takes on a new and role. But the attainment of a leadership role that fulfills a woman's gender identity is only possible through a personal journey that manages to overcome emotional, family and cultural conflicts preventing women from recognizing and revealing their own talent and their own style of leadership. In general, female potential is being blocked because it is being stigmatized, and stigmatized identities tend to function in certain contexts by masking themselves and imitating behaviors and scripts of the dominant culture. The path to female leadership is therefore part of an inner dialogue between a woman's identity and woman's self; a path toward the acknowledgment and appreciation of gender difference to be able to express it without shame and with authority.

Presently, femininity is disguising itself to be socially acceptable, so that women adopt behaviors that are typically rewarded by the majority and the dominant culture. Recent studies in empirical psychology demonstrate through the use of the M-F scale (masculinity vs femininity) how women have over time increased their masculinity scores compared to their femininity scores (Connell, 2002). Male identity is therefore more socially valued and, as proof of this, almost no man appears to have increased his femininity score. The price to pay for being part of the group, especially a power group, is denial first and then rejection of some parts of the female self. But living in disguise can wear women down, by causing fragility and anxiety, to such an extent that it often makes women quit the competition or end up denying their own identity and therefore their difference, by repeating the mystifying mantra "we are not women, but people".