Leadership Why Gender and Culture Matter Roya Ayman Illinois Institute of Technology Karen Korabik University of Guelph For decades, understanding of leadership has been largely based on the results of studies carried out on White men in the United States. We review major theories and models of leadership as they pertain to either gender or culture. We focus on 3 approaches to leadership: trait (including lead- ership categorization or implicit leadership theory), behav- ioral (including the two-factor, transformational–transac- tional leadership, and leader–member exchange models), and contingency (i.e., contingency model of leadership effectiveness and normative decision making). We discuss how dynamics related to either culture or gender (e.g., stereotypes and schemas, ingroup– outgroup interaction, role expectations, power and status differentials) can have an important impact on many aspects of leadership. Keywords: leadership, gender, culture, diversity, ethnicity A lmost two decades have passed since the Ameri- can Psychologist highlighted the importance of diversity in leadership (e.g., Hollander & Offer- mann, 1990; Morrison & Von Glinow, 1990). However, although interest in the role of diversity in leadership persists, the nature of the issues has changed since then. For example, during the 1990s the glass ceiling was a wide- spread metaphor used to explain why women and ethnocul- tural minorities often lacked access to leadership roles. Today, women and ethnocultural minorities still confront many leadership-related challenges. However, Eagly and Carli (2007) characterized these as taking the form of a labyrinth or maze consisting of many barriers that they must negotiate. The articles in the recent special issue on leadership in the American Psychologist (Sternberg, 2007), although rec- ognizing the contributions of individual men and women leaders from various cultural backgrounds, were largely founded on the assumption that leadership and its effec- tiveness are universal. Although for the most part the authors acknowledged the general importance of situational contingencies (Vroom & Jago, 2007; Zaccaro, 2007) and culture (Avolio, 2007) as contextual circumstances in de- termining leadership, they presented leadership as a phe- nomenon that is primarily gender and culture neutral. Thus, their focus was on the similarities, rather than the differ- ences, among the situations faced by men and women leaders and leaders from various cultures and ethnic back- grounds. Taking this stance, however, fails to acknowledge that additional factors related to the labyrinth (e.g., stereo- types and schemas, ingroup– outgroup dynamics, role ex- pectations, power and status differentials, and differential attributions made about and rewards given for similar be- havior) can have an important impact on many aspects of leadership. Moreover, because these factors privilege those in majority groups, they can create obstacles that women and ethnocultural minorities need to overcome if they are to attain positions of leadership or be successful once they have done so. We contend that studying leadership without the spe- cific inclusion of the role of gender and culture limits the scope of knowledge in this area. At a practical level, a lack of attention to these factors and the dynamics that they produce can create problems (Chin & Sanchez-Hucles, 2007) in the development of the leaders of tomorrow. If leaders are to be effective in a diverse society, they need to understand their own preferred style and behaviors and how these may differ from those preferred by others. Oth- erwise, their interactions with others are likely to be fraught with misattributions, misunderstandings, and misinterpre- tations. At a basic scientific level, failure to include diverse groups in research limits the validity and generalizability of findings and the inclusivity of theories. By contrast, cul- turally inclusive research has many benefits, including ex- panding on theories, increasing the range of variables, unconfounding variables, and understanding the context in which behavior occurs (Triandis & Brislin, 1984). The purpose of this article is to illustrate why gender and culture matter in our understanding of leadership. We first briefly define each concept. We then review the major mainstream theoretical approaches to the study of leader- ship, presenting the key findings pertaining to gender and culture. We acknowledge that gender and culture coexist in a symbiotic relationship. In addition, we argue that gender and culture have parallel dynamics in relation to leadership. However, because in the leadership literature very few studies have examined their joint effects, we discuss gender and culture separately. Roya Ayman, Institute of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology; Karen Korabik, Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Roya Ayman, Institute of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology, 3101 South Dearborn, Life Science Building, Room 252, Chicago, IL 60616. E-mail: ayman@iit.edu 157 April 2010 ● American Psychologist © 2010 American Psychological Association 0003-066X/10/$12.00 Vol. 65, No. 3, 157–170 DOI: 10.1037/a0018806 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.