Why female managers have the edge over males

Women in China play a very important role in management. A larger proportion of women occupy leadership positions in China than in most countries, including most Western countries, though the proportion is still far below half.

There are three reasons for this. The most important, I think, are rooted in the development of Chinese society in the past few decades.

First, the establishment of the People's Republic of China pushed back the traditional values of female inferiority. The first law passed in New China was the marriage law, which set up equal rights for women and men in families, a revolutionary outcome departing from thousands of years of tradition. Along with the new legal regulations, women obtained equal legal rights with men in most contexts, including in the workplace.

Second, the economy, in transition over the past three decades, offered equal opportunities for women and men, encouraging women to participate in entrepreneurial activities. Many women successfully expanded their businesses, including family stores, small vendors and companies of different sizes.

Third, urbanization offers opportunities for women to play more important roles in the family and facilitates their involvement in management positions at work. Rural communities divide the gender roles more rigidly and women tend to dominate in housework. Urban settings, on the contrary, greatly reduce the gender differences. Urban contexts offer more chances for women to play roles as equals to men.

As promising as these developments are, they represent just one side of the coin. The other side is not so rosy. Women are relatively underrepresented in leadership positions in China vis-a-vis men. In some rural areas, girls do not receive opportunities for education equal to those of boys because they may have to help parents earn money or take care of their families.

In the job market, female job applicants often encounter implicit discrimination. For example, our female doctoral students are sometimes told their target employers will hire only male candidates.

Laws in China forbid any kind of discrimination like that, but obviously the application of these laws needs more fine-grained implementation and sanctions to make sure that the laws are rigorously followed.

Some men may ask: Who cares? It is true that some men may not care about equal opportunities for women and men. However, females do have some advantages over men in management. According to my research, females have advantages in three ways.

First, a large body of literature has found that females are better at understanding other people's emotions and feelings. They have greater empathetic concern, meaning they are better at standing in other people's shoes. This tendency increases female managers' concern, care and benevolence toward their subordinates and colleagues. And having a caring manager increases the effectiveness of leadership within work groups.

Second, females prefer long-term relationships and commitment, including in work settings. Especially during a time of organizational crisis, a leader's commitment to the company long term may salvage the organization. Long-term commitments emphasize the building of trust, mutual support, employee development and reducing costs using approaches other than cutting jobs. These practices help maintain worker morale during times of difficulty, encouraging all employees to unite and find ways to get through rainy days.

Third, in stressful situations such as negotiations, females tend to be less susceptible to ethical problems. Sometimes negotiators bluff or promise future concessions they do not plan to deliver. These negotiating tactics, which can border on or sometimes cross into the unethical, are often thought to work in favor of negotiators, though research findings do not support the idea.

My research indicates two important results regarding differences between the sexes. Female negotiators, in general, are less likely to use these ethically problematic tactics than their male counterparts. In addition, when negotiators feel they have power, that is, that they feel they control important resources others need, the differences are even larger. In other words, power tends to ennoble females while it tends to corrupt males.

Testing a number of potential reasons for this effect, we found that the major reason is that females are underrepresented in the halls of power, making them more visible. Thus, females know that if they do something wrong, they are more likely to attract attention and be caught. In this sense, at least at the current stage, society tends to be better off if more females occupy leadership positions.

I once counted the number of news reports in The Wall Street Journal regarding the US television personality Martha Stewart, who went to jail for insider trading, and the late Enron executive and fraudster Ken Lay, from the dates that their misbehavior was discovered to the dates that their cases were concluded in the courts. Martha Stewart had sold her ImClone stock the day before a piece of important news lowered its price significantly.

Even though the size of their economic crimes showed clearly that Lay was much more harmful, The Wall Street Journal wrote about Stewart about 9.4 times as often. Why? Even discounting the celebrity factor, females in powerful positions tend to get much more attention than powerful males.

The author is an associate professor with Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.