Perspectives from the Middle East on the gender of successful managers

Drawing on evidence from business students in the Middle East we used Bem’s Sex Role Inventory to determine if females agreed with males about the attributes needed for management success. Our findings suggest they did not agree with the combination of masculine and feminine attributes identified by males, and that females had a very limited perspective about the attributes needed for successful management. However, after partitioning the sample by gender we found broad agreement between males and females about attributes needed when management was success was characterized androgynous. We conclude that while there is an absence of evidence for ‘think manager – think male” there is evidence for a gender-typed; “think (successful) manager, think androgynous manager”.