Global Advances on Women in Leadership

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to a Special Issue of Merits, entitled “Global Advances on Women in Leadership.”

Across the world, researchers and organizations are working to reveal, challenge, and change cultural norms associated with gender and leadership (Buss, Andler & Tiberius, 2025; Eagly & Carli, 2003). Worldwide, while women comprise 50% of the working age population (Goodkind & Rosenblum, 2023) and 40% of the global workforce (World Bank Open Data, 2022), men continue to dominate leadership roles globally, at 69% (World Economic Forum, 2022). Women are particularly underrepresented among top business and political leadership positions; the global average of female board-level executives in 2021 was less than 20%, and the global average of female chief executive officers (CEOs) was only 5% (Deloitte Global, 2022). Similarly, only 26 countries worldwide have a female head of state or government (UN Women, 2023). However, women’s leadership has been found to positively influence six areas of impact: (1) financial performance, risk, and stability; (2) innovation; (3) engagement with ethical initiatives; (4) health; (5) organizational culture and climate outcomes; and (6) influence on other women's careers and aspirations (Kalbarczyk et al., 2025).

Researchers from multiple disciplines, including management, psychology, economics, women’s studies, and political science, have investigated a variety of influencing factors, such as individual difference variables (e.g., Offermann et al., 2020), behaviors (e.g., McClean et al., 2022), perceptual biases (e.g., Dwivedi et al., 2021), and contextual factors (e.g., Post, 2015).

Patriarchy, and the hierarchy and hegemonic control it embodies, has proven to be unsustainable (Eisler & Fry, 2019). The sustainability of our planet hinges on diversity, the future of humanity relies on our ability to collaborate, and creative solutions require safe, equitable environments. Therefore, the work of gender equity in leadership extends well beyond gaining women a seat at the table. Gender equity in leadership represents social evolution.

Women represent one marginalized group, albeit the largest, working to cultivate leadership mindsets that uphold power balance and partnership through equitable access and representation. In this Special Issue, entitled “Global Advances on Women in Leadership”, we invite you to share examples, strategies, and insights into the cultural changes occurring worldwide to successfully advance women in leadership.

This Special Issue aims to capture a global, sectoral (corporate, public, not-for-profit), and transdisciplinary range of perspectives on women and leadership in line with Merits’ focus on contemporary, applied research in leadership and governance that champions equity, belonging, inclusion, wellbeing, and innovation to enable people to thrive in and through their work.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Women and corporate, public, and not-for-profit leadership;
• Women and leadership in sport, education, health, environment, STEM, business and economics, tourism and hospitality, justice, politics, and media and communication.

References:

Buss, M., Andler, S., & Tiberius, V. (2025). Female leadership: An integrative review and research framework. The Leadership Quarterly, 36(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2024.101858

Deloitte Global. (2022). Progress at a snail’s pace. Women in the boadroom: A global perspective.

Dwivedi, P. Misangyi, V.F. Joshi, A. (2021). “Burnt by the spotlight”: How leadership endorsements impact the longevity of female leaders. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106 (12) (2021), pp. 1885-1906, DOI: 10.1037/apl0000871 

Eagly, A.H. Carli, L.L. (2003). The female leadership advantage: An evaluation of the evidence.The Leadership Quarterly, 14 (6), pp. 807-834.

Eisler, R. T., & Fry, D. P. (2019). Nurturing our humanity: how domination and partnership shape our brains, lives, and future. Oxford University Press.

Goodkind, D., & Rosenblum, H. (2023). Sex Ratios Across the Life Course. Census.

Kalbarczyk, A., Banchoff, K., Perry, K. E., Pram Nielsen, C., Malhotra, A., & Morgan, R. (2025). A scoping review on the impact of women's global leadership: evidence to inform health leadership. BMJ global health, 10(2), e015982. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2024-015982

McClean, E.J.  Kim, S.  Martinez, T. (2022). Which ideas for change are endorsed? How agentic and communal voice affects endorsement differently for men and for women. Academy of Management Journal, 65 (2) (2022), pp. 634-655, DOI: 10.5465/amj.2019.0492

Offermann L.R., Thomas, K.R. Lanzo, L.A. Smith, L.N. (2020). Achieving leadership and success: A 28-year follow-up of college women leaders. The Leadership Quarterly, 31 (4), DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101345

Post, C., Latu, I.M., Belkin, L. Y. (2019). A female leadership trust advantage in times of crisis: Under what conditions? Psychology of Women Quarterly, 43 (2) (2019), pp. 215-231, 10.1177/0361684319828292

UN Women. (2023). Facts and figures: Women’s leadership and political participation. Retrieved December 6, 2023, from https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-figures

World Bank. (2022). Labor force, female (% of total labor force). Germany. Retrieved December 18, 2023, from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.FE.ZS?locations=DE&name_desc=false.

World Economic Forum. (2022). Global Gender Gap Report 2022. https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2022/in-full/2-4-gender-gaps-in-leadership-by-industry-and-cohort/

Prof. Dr. Jennifer Walinga
Prof. Dr. Angela Schneider
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Merits is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• women
• leadership
• equity
• power balance
• gender
• feminism
• diversity
• representation
• human rights
• sustainability