Women Becoming Leaders

This volume provides a comprehensive exploration of the barriers and facilitators women encounter on their leadership paths, enriching the literature on gender and leadership dynamics. More specifically, it uncovers several previously underexplored areas of women’s identity development as leaders, such as intersectionality, examining how factors such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background intersect with gender to shape unique leadership experiences.

The chapters also explore socio-cultural variations in becoming a leader, analyze the impact of organizational norms and expectations on leadership influencing women’s leadership identity, and study how leadership identities evolve through different career stages. By examining these aspects, this work offers new insights into the complex and multifaceted nature of women's leadership identity development across diverse contexts.

By highlighting women’s leadership and their identity development, this book uniquely positions itself to help scholars and scholar-practitioners in HRD, leadership, and gender studies gain an in-depth understanding of the current and future challenges women face in becoming leaders and the support mechanisms and processes shaping their leadership identity development.

Yoshie Tomozumi Nakamura is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University, USA. She also serves as the Director of the Organizational Leadership and Learning (OLL) Master's Program. She specializes in leadership learning and development and emphasizes empathic communication, interpersonal relationships, and reflection, viewing leadership as a dynamic social process.

Maria Cseh is Professor in Human and Organizational Learning (HOL) at the George Washington University, USA, where she serves as the Director of the HOL Doctoral Program. Her current research is focused on global mindset, cultural intelligence and competence and their leaning and development that will help leaders and change agents address the increasingly complex issues facing our world.