Psychosocial Barriers to Female Leadership: Motivational Gravity in Ghana and Tanzania

Abstract

Women continue to be underrepresented in management globally, including the so-called "developing" countries, where gender diversity is especially crucial to business development. From Ghana, 120 experienced employees and 83 future managers from Tanzania's University of Dar-es-Salaam, read scenarios depicting male or female achievers, and predicted what proportions of co-workers and bosses would display encouragement, discouragement, or apathy. In Ghana, male respondents predicted encouragement from males towards male and female achievers but discouragement from females towards female achievers, while female respondents predicted more discouragementgenerally. In Tanzania, male respondents also predicted discouragement from females towards female achievers, while female respondents predicted the exact reverse. Such similarities and differences, across culturally diverse contexts in West and East Africa, highlight both global and local barriers to women in development.