Women and Glass Ceiling

By Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

There are three popular explanations for the clear under-representation of women in management, namely (a) they are not capable, (b) they are not interested, and (c) they are both interested and capable but unable to break the glass ceiling… But what if we are missing the big picture?

In my view, the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is our inability to discern between confidence and competence. That is, because we misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women.

In other words, when it comes to leadership, the only advantage that men have over women is the fact that manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential, and that these occur much more frequently in men than in women.

This is consistent with the finding that leaderless groups have a natural tendency to elect self-centred, overconfident and narcissistic individuals as leaders, and that these characteristics are not equally common in men and women.

In line, Freud argued that the psychological process of leadership occurs because a group of people — the followers — have replaced their own narcissistic tendencies with those of the leader, such that their love for the leader is a disguised form of self-love, or a substitute for their inability to love themselves.

From “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?”