The aim of the research is to investigate whether gender and educational attainment can impact the leadership opportunities provided by supervisors. The method used to conduct the research involved conducting two parametric tests, the Mann Whitney U Test & Kruskal Wallis H Test Instructions. The results of the study revealed that gender was significant in determining leadership opportunities. Education was also significant in determining leadership opportunities. The conclusion from the study is that there is gender bias in the provision of leadership opportunities that should be addressed. The role played by the leadership in any organization is important. A leader such as a supervisor is a link between the management and employees. The supervisor can engage in participative leadership and involve employees in the leadership process. Chan (2019) observes that there is a strong relationship between participative leadership on job satisfaction. The supervisor can play a huge role in providing more activities for the employees, increasing their work engagement, satisfaction, and productivity (Akpoviroro et al., 2018). A leader that engages employees can also improve the creativity of the organization. The investigation of whether the supervisor provides leadership opportunities in an organization is important to analyze the presence of gender bias and the type of leadership applied. The provision of leadership opportunities is based on the motivation theory and transformational leadership theory. Abraham’s Maslow postulated the motivation theory through the hierarchy of needs. The highest level of the hierarchy is that self-actualization (Maslow, 2019). At this level, employees may not need additional compensation as they have met most of their basic needs. The organization and leadership can appreciate the employees through the use of promotions and providing leadership opportunities. Providing leadership opportunities to employees can improve the motivation and satisfaction of employees. Transformational leadership is a type of leadership where the leader encourages and inspires, and motivates the employees to innovate and create changes that can help the organization grow (Othman & Lembang, 2017). One of the key elements of such a style of leadership involves engaging employees. The benefit of transformational leadership is that it builds trust among employees and improves the commitment of employees (Othman & Lembang, 2017). Employee engagement can be possible through participative leadership that can involve letting a team decide on the progress of a project (Hayat et al., 2019). The transformational and participative leadership style can improve the engagement of employees and their productivity. The provision of leadership opportunities is critical for the development of employees. However, supervisors in an organization can be biased and provide leadership opportunities based on an individual’s gender and education attainment. Kairys et al. (2018) observed that gender has an impact on the leadership opportunities for women. While women can dominate the workforce, senior management and top leadership positions are mostly accorded to men. Education attainment can also influence leadership opportunities where individuals with higher levels of education can be given higher leadership positions. The research design involved collecting data from the 2018 Federal Employee Viewpoint and analyzing it in SPSS by conducting a nonparametric Mann Whitney U test and a Kruskal Wallis H test. The survey was conducted in the form of a self-administered web survey for federal employees. The employees responded to 98 items, 78 items involved broad topics, and 16 items were demographics. The sample size chosen was 78,195, and 42,027 employees responded. Question 43 was chosen as the participants responded regarding being provided with leadership opportunities by the supervisors. The responses were then analyzed based on the demographic variables of gender (male = 1 and female = 2) and education level (Less than bachelor’s degree = 1, bachelor’s degree = 2, and beyond bachelor’s degree =3). A hypothesis was formulated, and the data was analyzed in SPSS. The strength of the methodology is that it has high reliability and validity because of the large sample size and large effect size. The correct statistical approach was also used to analyze the data. Figures 1 and 2 showed the Mann-Whitney U test results analyzing the difference in the provision of leadership opportunities based on gender. The mean rank of men R = 260,490.74 was higher than that of females R = 253,872.86. The Man-Whitney U statistic was U = 56,997,731,640.0 p= 0.000. The significance level was 0.05, as shown in figure 1, and the decision was to reject the null hypothesis ( Denis, 2018 ). The conclusion arrived at was there is a statistically significant difference in the agreement as to whether the federal agency supervisor provides the employee with opportunities to demonstrate his or her leadership skills (Q43) based on the sex of the employee (DSEX). Figures 3 and 4 showed the Kruskal-Wallis test analyzing the difference in the provision of leadership opportunities based on education level. The results from the Kruskal- Wallis test statistic showed that the test statistic χ 2 = 3,969.007 and p= 0.000. The results of the test were found to be significant, and the decision was to reject the null hypothesis ( Abu-Bader, 2021 ). The conclusion arrived at was that there is a statistically significant difference in the agreement as to whether the federal agency supervisor provides the employee with opportunities to demonstrate his or her leadership skills (Q43) based on the education level of the employee (DEDUC). The results showed that gender has an influence on the decision by the supervisor to provide leadership opportunities. The male population ranked higher in being given leadership opportunities compared to females. The findings from the study were supported by previous research. According to Luksyte et al. (2018), sex-based stereotypes are present in the workplace. Certain types of work like innovative and leadership work were found to be stereotypically ascribed to men. Wynn and Correll (2018) observed that there is a stereotype where women are perceived to be less competent than men in many domains. Organizations should strive to stop such bias by engaging in bias mitigation efforts through training and engaging in diversity awareness programs. The analysis of the employee level on the provision of leadership opportunities to employees also showed a difference in the provision of leadership opportunities. The expectation was that employees that have education beyond a bachelor’s degree would be given more leadership opportunities compared to those that did not have a bachelor’s degree. The results were also supported by research that indicated that education attainment is a key factor in determining the provision of leadership opportunities (Lechner et al., 2018). The study showed that there is a need for employees to improve their education levels so that they can engage more in various leadership opportunities.
Conclusion
The study showed that gender and education level are significant factors in predicting the provision of leadership opportunities. The implication of the study is that there are gender bias and discrimination based on education attainment. The federal government should seek to address the issue by providing training to supervisors and leaders to address men and women equally. The study also showed that education level could play a huge role in the provision of leadership opportunities. The implication is that employees should constantly engage in education improvement so that they can participate in more leadership roles.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
References
Abu-Bader, S. H. (2021). Using statistical methods in social science research: With a complete SPSS guide . Oxford University Press, USA.
Akpoviroro, K. S., Kadiri, B., & Owotutu, S. O. (2018). Effect of participative leadership style on employee’s productivity. International Journal of Economic Behavior , 8 (1), 47-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.14276/2285-0430.1927
Chan, S. C. (2019). Participative leadership and job satisfaction. Leadership & Organization Development Journal . 40(3), 319-333. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-06-2018-0215
Denis, D. J. (2018). SPSS data analysis for univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistics . John Wiley & Sons.
Hayat Bhatti, M., Ju, Y., Akram, U., Hasnat Bhatti, M., Akram, Z., & Bilal, M. (2019). Impact of participative leadership on organizational citizenship behavior: Mediating role of trust and moderating role of continuance commitment: Evidence from the Pakistan hotel industry. Sustainability , 11 (4), 1170. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11041170
Kairys, M. R. (2018). The influence of gender on leadership in education management. International Journal of Educational Management , 32 (5),931-941. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-04-2017-0094
Lechner, C. M., Sortheix, F. M., Obschonka, M., & Salmela-Aro, K. (2018). What drives future business leaders? How work values and gender shape young adults' entrepreneurial and leadership aspirations. Journal of Vocational Behavior , 107 , 57-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.03.004
Luksyte, A., Unsworth, K. L., & Avery, D. R. (2018). Innovative work behavior and sex‐based stereotypes: Examining sex differences in perceptions and evaluations of innovative work behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 39 (3), 292-305. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2219
Maslow, A. H. (2019). A theory of human motivation . General Press.
Odoardi, C., Battistelli, A., Montani, F., & Peiró, J. M. (2019). Affective commitment, participative leadership, and employee innovation: a multilevel investigation. Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology , 35 (2), 103-113. https://doi.org/10.5093/jwop2019a12
Othman, S. Z., & Lembang, S. A. (2017). What attracts Gen Y to stay in an organization? HR practices, organizational support, or leadership style. International Review of Management and Marketing , 7 (2), 1-9. https://ideas.repec.org/a/eco/journ3/2017-02-01.html
Wynn, A. T., & Correll, S. J. (2018). Combating gender bias in modern workplaces. In Handbook of the Sociology of Gender (pp. 509-521). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76333-0_37
