Women's Leadership in a Globalized World

2007-04-06 Kim Mang-sun

The world is beginning a new era. The emerging globalized economy is creating new challenges and opportunities for women leaders. Issues such as global warming, protection of the environment, workers rights, and aid to the world's most vulnerable populations, especially women and children, require new and dynamic leadership.

Women's traditional roles have emphasized nurturance, which can be expanded to include caring for the environment and helping those in need. However, the world is increasingly seeing women in leadership roles in such disparate fields of the military, the sciences, government, and business as both entrepreneurs and corporate executives.

In the new era, the world is going to need leaders of both genders. A new information economy demands sophisticated cognitive capacities, language and communication skills, and people skills. Such skills are not at all limited to the male gender; women generally have stronger language skills and are more sensitive to human relations than men. The world needs more women leaders than ever before.

Are you a leader? A leader has authority over other people with the purpose of getting a job done, implementing a vision, creating something new, influencing policy, communicating a point of view, and so forth. Regardless of the goal of the organization, a leader must organize people and direct them toward the achievement of their goals.
So what does it take to become a woman leader in the new era?

First, it takes a vision of leadership that is collaborative and team-oriented. Leaders are not born, they are made. Leaders need to enhance social skills because leadership of humansrequires reconciling individual motivations with collective goals. They need to be able to communicate a vision, inspire their subordinates, develop consensus, reward excellence, deal with problems, negotiate differences, and get the job done.

In a globalized environment, communication skills require knowledge of more than one language, especially the world language for business, English. In addition, a global woman leader needs to be sensitive to cultural differences because leadership in the new world environment increasingly requires collaboration among peoples from differing societies, cultures, and world views.

As the new globalized world emerges, women are going to be increasingly called upon to fill leadership roles in practically every realm of human endeavor. The world is creating new opportunities for female leadership. To take your place in this emerging environment, you must learn the skills of leadership.