Women Manager's Gender Identification And Leadership Self-Efficacy

In the recent two decades, women have been taking a more and more important role in business management; they represent 50% of up-to-middle level managers. But in overall, women's position in management is still low; there are only a few women leaders at the top. Top level management is an area women need to have stronger presence.To increase women's presence at higher level management, in addition to the leadership knowledge and skills provided to women employees, we need to include women's gender-role identification and leadership self-efficacy into the development program.For this purpose, with a combination of quantitative study and qualitative study, we used three researches to explore women manager's gender-role idenfitication and leadership self-efficacy.In research one, we identified the quantitative relationship between the above two variables. In research two, we explored women manager's gender-role identification and leadership self-efficacy based on interviews. In research three, we presented two individual women manager's picture regarding their gender-role identification and leadership self-efficacy.Our main findings include the following:·The majority of women managers have strong self-efficacy as middle level managers, while their willingness and self-efficacy for top level positions are relatively low.·Women manager's gender sensitiveness has a negative relation with leadership self-efficacy.·Gender self-confidence promotes one's leadership self-efficacy.·Women managers of masculine and androgynous categories have higher leadership self-efficacy.·Women's gender role conflict has a negative relation with their leadership self-efficacy.Family and work balance is a principle guiding women manager's thinking and practice.Being androgynous facilitate women manager's leadership.