Women Leadership in Hospitality

“Little girls with dreams become women with vision”.

Although the hospitality industry shows growth, only few women are found in high managerial positions. The hotel sector is dominated by women with an average 55.5% of the workforce, but is managed by men, as women are mainly found in positions that are stereotypically ascribed to their gender, such as directors of sales, housekeeping, and marketing.

The findings of one of the studies suggest that women are equally capable to their male counterparts and they acquire skills that are considered to be more effective in the context of the hospitality industry. They are nurturing, better at communicating with people, they are caring, and they adopt supporting behaviors. Women in managerial positions are more successful in facing the increasing competitiveness and adapt to changes more efficiently.

Within this changing and challenging environment, changes in the workforce and employability are evident and required. Amongst other factors such as geographical and cultural distances the increasing numbers of women in employment have changed the face of hospitality organizations.

Can transformational leadership be called female leadership?

 When we compare the scores of transformational leadership of male and female supervisor/manager……Results showed that female leaders score significantly higher (4.16/5) than male leaders (3.44/5). We can conclude that employees of female leaders perceive their leaders as being more transformational leaders than those of male leaders. Analyzing the adjectives used by employees to describe their supervisor/manager, female leaders are more often described as transformational than male leaders and that is significant.

These adjectives have been divided in five categories based on transformational leadership characteristics.

POWER:                     determined, perfectionist, demanding, tough, direct, goal-oriented, assertive

CHARISMATIC:        smart, incredible

SOCIABLE:               friendly, relaxed, kind, outgoing

PROFESSIONAL:     good advisor, well organized, hard worker, effective, steadfast, great leader, strong communication skills, competent, pedagogue

COOPERATIVE:       helpful, comprehensive, patient, listening, guiding, open-minded, understanding

PEOPLE ORIENTED:    human, calm, attentive, down to earth, empathic, careful, and respectful.

The influence of women leaders in hospitality

To conclude, even though in hospitality it seems that women are still restricted to certain roles such as human resources or rooms division, these findings point towards validating that there is a potential need to welcome more women in leadership positions in the hospitality industry. We at Regency College of Hotel Management on the best Hotel Management in Hyderabad, give an equal opportunity to the female students to take part in all the departmental events and guide them to become managers….. 

A women’s inherent transformational leadership style directly and positively impacts the employees themselves, the organization itself, but also the industry. Also, female leaders tend to behave more often as transformational leaders. Based on the employees’ perception, this leadership style is recognized and appreciated in a way that it positively affects their motivation. There is no doubt that this leadership style is efficient in the hospitality industry and results in positive achievements. The evidence of women playing such an important role is important to be highlighted and needs more support from the hospitality industry.

As final words, we hope to have brought to the fore that a woman in leadership seems to be valuable and could increase employee motivation and reduce employee turnover.

We at Regency believe that “Little girls with dreams become women with vision”.