According to Pew researchers, 53 percent of Americans say there are still too few women in high political office in the United States. With women filling less than 28 percent of elected offices, the 2023 global Gender Parity Index shows that 42 countries outrank the U.S. These include Moldova, Rwanda, and Namibia. A 2023 Pew Research Center analysis reports that women have served as the head of government in 59 United Nations member states. The first was Sri Lanka, where Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected prime minister in 1960. Currently, over half of the female heads of state are in Europe.
This is 65 years of female political leadership worldwide and provides a robust database to document the changes when women lead. In a July 2024 article from the American Psychological Association, author Amy Novotney says, “When women are empowered to take on leadership positions, the effects can be metamorphic for everyone.” Novotney reviews decades of studies showing that when women lead, there are improvements in productivity, collaboration, organizational dedication, and fairness.
She explains that one reason for these advances is that female leaders have more transformational leadership styles; they are more likely than men to epitomize what’s good in the organization and inspire people to follow its mission.
Organizational psychologist Anita Williams Woolley, Ph.D., and her colleagues find that the presence of women greatly improves team collaboration. In workplace groups of two to five people, they find that the proportion of women in a group is strongly........