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The Athena Doctrine: Is the Future of PR Feminine?
This article was first published in PR Week, 5 March 2015. Read the original article here.
Two years ago a book set tongues wagging across the globe when it asserted that ‘feminine’ values could be the answer to many of humanity’s woes.
The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future based its premise on a worldwide piece of research with 64,000 people. The study highlighted a growing dissatisfaction with what many perceived to be masculine values and traits dominating global business and politics. The book’s broad conclusion was that if men thought and acted more like women, the world might be a better place.
The Athena Doctrine is not alone in driving the debate around masculine versus feminine in the world of leadership. There has been a plethora of publications, studies and media focus around similar issues.
2013 also saw publication of Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, authored by Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, which acted as a siren-call for women to embrace their skills and challenge perceptions about what they can and cannot achieve.
Last year Ketchum’s Leadership Communication Monitor, a survey of 6,500 people in 13 countries examining the link between effective leadership and effective communication, revealed that globally female leaders were deemed to perform best on the most important leadership attributes: leading by example; communicating in an open, transparent way; admitting mistakes; bringing out the best in others and handling controversial issues or crises calmly. However, survey respondents still looked to men (54 per cent) to navigate the world through challenging and rapidly changing times. In the UK that number rose to 60 per cent of respondents thinking male leaders were best placed to do this, despite also believing women outperformed men when it came to the most important leader attributes.
And so the discussion rages as to what masculine and feminine qualities are, whether they are exclusive to each sex and how businesses might benefit from better understanding of how to tap into the best of both.
Certainly, when it comes to the PR industry, it is no secret that it is dominated by women until it comes to t