Page 57 [57]
WOMEN IN TOP LEADERSHIP POSITIONS
example, in a healthcare institution, the best doctors are left in the healing
process while the administration is entrusted to serious officials.""
Thus, it is reasonable to assume that it is not necessarily the best profes¬
sionals who are hired at the Academy of Sciences and for positions in higher
educational institutions, but that mostly men (from the club) will be elected
based on lobbying, the aforementioned habits, the Matthew effect, and the
categorization based on other gender stereotypes.
This fact is further substantiated in the research done by Nora Séllei, who
studied women professors at the University of Debrecen, and found that there
are no women among the leaders in certain fields at all. “The University of
Debrecen has some ‘university’ faculties (this no longer being a legal category),
which have as of yet not appointed a woman professor."
As management essentially reguires male attributes, leadership attitudes
are generally masculine. In addition, the paradoxical situation is described by
the study A token helyzet és a meritokrácia illuziója: a kivétel erősíti a szabályt?
[The token situation and the illusion of meritocracy: the exception reinforcing
the rule?], “women who do get leadership positions will typically be in a token
position in high status — ‘manly’ — areas, but this will not reduce prejudices
against them; it will increase them due to intensified stereotyping.”’”
For this reason, they start to behave like a “man”: that is, they try to adapt
to their new roles by picking up masculine attributes. Thus, as a combined
effect of the token situation and the chilling climate, assimilation can be in¬
terpreted as a phenomenon among the women leaders’? which, in turn, leads
to a displeasing result, since the traditionally masculine leadership style is seen
as a negative value judgment for women and leads to a less favourable assess¬
ment. This is also a disadvantage for work organisations.
150 Czakó, Á.: Szervezetek és szerveződések a társadalomban. Szervezetszociológiai jegyzetek,
Budapest, BCE Szociológia és Társadalompolitika Intézet, 2011, 13.
Sellei: Professzornök, 267. “These faculties include the Faculty of Law (ÁJK), Faculty of
Informatics (IK), Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Environmental Management
(MEK) and Faculty of Economics and Business (GTK). This means there is not a single woman
among the 36 professors working in the above faculties in 2015, and never was one among
the 65 professors who were appointed to the faculties in their total lifespan. [There is one
female professor on GTK, but she was originally appointed to the Faculty of Economics which
has lost its individual status since]” (Séllei: Professzornök, 267).
Vida—Kovacs: A token helyzet, 145.
Another way of fending off the stereotype is to try to assume the characteristics of a more
positively regarded social group (Padilla, 2000, quoted by Block, C. J. — Koch, S. M. — Liberman,
B. E. — Merriweather, T. J. — Roberson, L.: Contending With Stereotype Threat at Work.
A Model of Long-Term Responses 1¥7, The Counseling Psychologist, 39(4), 2011, 570-600,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000010382459). “Assimilation refers to the process of trying to
attain a more desired social identity by distancing oneself from members of one’s negatively
stereotyped group and adopting the characteristics of members of a more highly regarded
identity group” (Ellemers, Spears, Doosje, 2002; Roberts, 2005; Thomas, 1993, quoted by Block
et al., 577).
15
a
15!
DS
153