Misurare gli atteggiamenti verso la leadership femminile e maschile in un’ottica di educazione di genere

Abstract

Measuring Attitudes to Female and Male Leadership Within a Gender Education Perspective

This paper presents two scales that are proposed as training tools for assessing students’ attitudes toward leadership from a gender perspective. The low presence of women in key managerial roles is a very important topic, especially from the educational point of view, considering that, even if young women obtain better results at school and university, they hardly achieve leadership positions in the workplace. The knowledge that women acquire in learning contexts does not appear to be enough to cause a significant change in the workplace and in positions of power. In order to promote a significant increase in future female participation in leadership contexts, it seems important to focus on young women and men’s awareness of gender stereotypes and of the concrete situation characterising women’s condition in the workplace and in positions of power. The two scales proposed have been validated through a questionnaire survey conducted during winter 2010 on a random stratified sample consisting of 1897 students from the final year of secondary schooling in the provinces of Bologna and Rimini. The scales focus on perceptions concerning leaders’ characteristics within a gender perspective. The process for validating the two scale by means of factor analysis and the verification of internal consistency is described.