Diversity Week 2025: Joris Lammers (University of Cologne): “Female Leadership: Do Women make better Leaders than Men?”

Exaggerated claims about female leadership strength can paradoxically undermine social equality

This event will be held in English. Attendance is free and registration is not required.

In many organizations and companies, women are still underrepresented in higher levels of management or CEO positions. An often-heard claim in popular media is that because women have better people-skills, are better communicators, and are more empathic than men, women also make better leaders than men. Psychological science shows that such claims are overblown and exaggerated: Women and men do not differ so much as many people think.

In his talk during Diversity Week at the University of Cologne on June 4, 2025, ECONtribute and C-SEB member Joris Lammers will discuss how such claims can paradoxically contribute to maintaining gender inequality. Claims that women are super leaders lead people to infer that the problem of female underrepresentation in leadership will solve itself. After all, if women are such great leaders (compared to poor men), there is no need for affirmative action. Joris Lammers shows that highlighting the gender of female leaders focuses disproportionate attention on any negative attributes. This can lead to a devaluation of leaders who happen to be women. Although diversity in gender is a laudable goal, exaggerated claims of female leadership run the risk of being counter-productive and undermining social justice.

Many people think that women have better people-skills than men and are therefore better leaders. Joris Lammers shows that women and men do not differ so much. Instead, he argues that such claims can paradoxically contribute to gender inequality and hurt female leaders.

Diversity Week is organised by the Vice-Rectorate for Anti-Discrimination and Equal Opportunities and the Department for Equal Opportunities. More information can be found here.

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Joris Lammers, University of Cologne

The talk and the subsequent discussion will be simultaneously interpreted into sign language.