This project integrates and summarizes research that has compared men and women who are leaders or managers. Using quantitative methods known as meta-analysis, these reviews represent each study's findings numerically (by means of a statistic called an effect size). Statistical analyses are then performed on these numbers. This project thus uses statistically correct methods for drawing conclusions from research rather than the informal rules-of-thumb that reviewers traditionally used. One meta-analysis examines studies that compared women's and men's effectiveness as leaders. The second meta-analysis examines studies in which the sex of leaders was varied while constraining their behavior to be equivalent. These studies address the issue of whether male and female leaders are perceived differently even when their behavior is the same. These reviews complement two other meta-analyses being carried out by the principal investigator. One of these other meta- analyses examines sex differences in leadership style and the other examines sex differences in the tendency to emerge as a leader in initially leaderless groups. These four meta-analyses provide an exhaustive survey of leadership research that has compared the sexes. This project will summarize the findings of hundreds of leadership studies and provide empirically-grounded generalizations about male and female leadership behavior and its effects. The project also has general implications for understanding sex differences in social behavior. These implications stem from the fact that leadership research provides the only major body of studies in which female and male behavior has been compared in organizational settings as well as laboratory experimental settings. A better understanding of sex differences in leadership is essential in light of recent and continuing demographic trends in organizational leadership.
