Enter the Labyrinth: A Conversation on Women, Gender, and Leadership

by Onome Ekeh / Futurezoo, 10 March 2022
“I’ve not been a fan of the glass ceiling metaphor. It caught on very quickly, I think, in the early ‘70s. The problem with it is that it suggests a rather absolute barrier (“you can only get so far”). And the idea of glass is actually slightly demeaning to women, because the idea is you don’t see it. It’s defeatist. I’ve advocated an alternative metaphor, which is the labyrinth.”
– Alice Eagly
Different red colored ball between others on abacus.
Image: iStock
To commemorate International Women’s Day, ETH Zurich’s Head of Foresight, Chris Luebkeman moderated a cross-generational conversation about the role gender plays in leadership, with Alice Eagly and Julia Dannath-Schuh, both behavioural psychologists.

Alice Eagly, a Professor of Psychology Emerita at Northwestern University, is a pioneering female academic. She is widely published and her interest in the psychology of gender is more recently focused on the metadata around gender stereotypes and their propagation.

Julia Dannath-Schuh holds a doctorate in psychology from ETH Zurich and has worked in the corporate sector as both a CEO and a consultant. She is currently ETH’s Vice President for Personnel Development and Leadership.

Is gender important in leadership? How far have we come with gender bias? Do we need to rethink our expectations and push past stereotypes? The discussion traversed the fine and sticky outlines of the shifting culture around women in relationship to power.

Some highlights:

There’s Been Progress. Slow-going Progress

Alice Eagly notes that early in the 20th century, in the US Congress there was one woman, an outlier, who remained so for a few decades. Fast forward a full century, the global aggregate for women in power (that is, besides monarchal situations), in congresses, senates, parliaments and other political appointments is about 27%. It’s not stellar, but it’s not nothing - there is still distance to cover.

Big Business Isn’t Better

Gender distribution in leadership roles among international large corporations are still dismal. Representation fares better on the boards. Some countries like Norway have resorted to installing quota systems. Academia is thankfully a bit more equitable, for example, 30% of college and university heads in the US are women.

Some Things Have Moved Forward, But How?

Gauging success is a mixed bag. While activism plays a significant role, Eagly notes that in her research, desire to assume power on the part of women is a major factor. Cultural expectations tend to tamp down the impulses of women to pursue political office. Very often women will curb their ambitions, at least publicly, so as not to invite the backlash that comes with bucking traditional female stereotypes. The good news is that representation has contributed to adjusting these cultural norms and changing the perception of who can occupy political office, head corporations, and other leadership roles.

Women at The Edge

Dannath-Schuh chimes in about academic microcosms, like ETH: the favourable conditions at ETH (for women) were brought about by a first and second generation of pioneering women with strong “uncomfortable” personalities, who fought for the benefits women like her enjoy today. So there’s always a matter of context, is it a fight or a negotiation? Later in the conversation a spotlight is turned on the different leadership typologies. It’s clear that the requirements for good leadership are always context driven.

Glass Ceiling, Meet Labyrinth

Eagly doesn’t care for the “Glass Ceiling” metaphor. She sees it as defeatist and a little condescending. She offers a new paradigm, “The Labyrinth”. While men have a clear cut path to their goals, women have a more meandering maze of a feedback loop. They need to use a lot more brain power to solve puzzling obstructions in the path - and the journey can be exhausting.

Is Gender Relevant to Leadership?

Eagly asserts that leadership has a fairly “masculine” set of expectations: i.e., taking charge, being assertive, and competitive. The opposing gender stereotype of women is of being more communal, empathetic with social skills, and a more egalitarian managerial style—as opposed to the male-oriented “top down” methods.
Dannath-Schuh counters that maybe we are doing ourselves a disservice by fostering these stereotypes, and nurturing beliefs that hinder us from reaching our goals. Good leadership, she maintains, transcends gender.

Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast

Speaking of gender bias and cultural expectations, a personal anecdote: after German Chancellor, Angela Merkel had been re-elected for the third time, Dannath-Schuh was at breakfast with her five year old son, who asked if it was possible for a man to also be the Chancellor? The moral of the story being that representation makes a difference. It’s not so much that gender is relevant, rather our expectations. Cultural perceptions, which inform behaviour, can be modified - and this happens in part via media representation.

Navigating the Maze

When Eagly earned her PhD in 1965, she was amongst a handful of women in academia. Dannath-Schuh asks what she would do differently in hindsight, and what advice she has to offer? Eagly cautions against naïveté, not acknowledging the barriers - to navigate the labyrinth, one needs to have an awareness of it, and then develop skills within the feedback loop of navigating it. She reminisces on her “lone scholar” ideal, and the simplistic notion that she was operating in a meritocracy. She wishes she had understood the value of building relationships, especially with the few other women in the field at the time.

About the author

A narrative conceptualist, Onome Ekeh was born and raised on both sides of the Atlantic, and is now based in Switzerland. Her work has appeared in literary, film, and technology journals in the U.S. and Europe. She is Creative Director of Futurezoo, a boutique digital agency, and is currently at work on a volume of speculative fiction.