Good News for Male Bosses We found a Wall Street Journal article titled Good News for Male Bosses. The article was post November 13, 2013 and written by Rachel Feintzeig. She covers management trends and chief executives for the newspaper and work blog of the Wall Street Journal. In this article the Gallup Consulting company took a survey from 2,059 people asking if they would prefer a male or female boss. They found that both men and women would prefer to work for a male boss. This article gained our attention because we believed America’s workforce is drastically changing and wanted to know what good news there were for male bosses. The numerous stats indicate male bosses are still preferred but a shift in a non-preference seems to be how America’s workforce is changing. The interesting part of the article is Millennials are no more than likely to prefer a female boss. Although Millennials support gay marriage and marijuana legalization, having the same likelihood as the average American worker to prefer a female boss is a rare instance of that group not breaking from historic norms. The reason why this caught our attention was we are part of the Millennials and this group has not changed the statistics. The main group of American’s who are least likely to prefer male bosses are Americans between the ages of 35 and 54. The topic and statistics are important to understand the change America has had since 1953. Although forty-one percent of the people had no preference, thirty-five percent said they would prefer a male boss. These preferences have been steady over the years, but have changed drastically over the long term. In 1953 Gallup posted the same poll for the first time. Sixty-six of Americans would rather for a male boss, while only five percent preferred a female in 1953. As time has pasted less people have a preference, as compared in 1953. The statistics indicate America’s workforce is drastically changing and although male bosses are still preferred over females there is not an enormous wide gap today as was in 1953. Another fact found in the study is those working for men prefer to have men bosses whereas those working for females are as likely to want a female boss as a male boss. This shows how once an individual has had a female boss they believe females are just as good bosses if not better than males. One day America’s workforce may see females preferred over male bosses, but there will more than likely be more American’s having no preference of rather their boss is male or female. From the employed people they surveyed fifty-four percent of them work for a male boss. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief says that those who currently work for a female would prefer a female boss and suggest that those with male bosses would show a preference for a female boss if they ever worked for a female boss. Although the article says that workers prefer a male boss, demographics show that Americans between 35 and 54 are least likely to prefer a male boss.
The main reason we selected this article is because we talked about leadership is changing and how, unlike the article shows, women are better leaders. The article did explain about how times have changed and more employees are leaning towards female bosses. In chapter 11 we talked about leadership and gender differences. Under gender differences they talk about how women inhabit all 5 levels of leadership skills, but men continue to have more position power and formal authority. Although some women have some better leadership traits, Americans still