一个接一个，闪耀的光环正好落在了女性头上。通用汽车、IBM、百事、洛克希德·马丁和杜邦等几十家美国巨头企业的现任老板都是女性。牛津大学即将跟随哈佛大学的脚步，任命第一位女校长。但女性仍然有很长的路要走：据《纽约时报》指出，美国的大公司中，光是叫约翰的男老板就比女老板的总数多。但趋势一目了然：在大学毕业生和大公司新聘的职员中，女性人数已经超过一半。

　　Will this growing cadre of female bosses manage any differently from men? Forty years ago feminists would have found the very question demanding. Pioneers such as Margaret Thatcher argued that women could and would do the same job as men, if given a chance. But today some management scholars argue that women excel in the leadership qualities most valued in modern firms.

　　由女老板组成的骨干队伍在不断壮大。她们对企业的管理与男性会有任何不同吗?40年前，女权主义者会觉得这样的问题很贬低人。玛格丽特撒切尔这类先锋曾主张，如果给予女性机会，她们能胜任也愿意做与男性同样的工作。但今天，一些管理学者认为，在现代企业最为重视的领袖特质上，女性更胜一筹。

　　Those who say women are better suited to taking charge of today’s companies also lean on two other arguments. The first is that women are better at “androgynous” management-that is, combining supposedly “male” and “female” characteristics into a powerful mixture. This is particularly valuable in business undergoing great upheaval, which need a combination of command-and-control and caring-and-sharing. The second is that women differ from men not so much in their leadership style as in the values that they bring to the job. They are much more influenced by compassion and fairness than men.

　　那些认为女性更适合掌管当今企业的人还依赖另两个观点。首先是女性更擅长“中性化”管理，即把一般认为属于“男性”或“女性”的特征合并成一种强大的混合物。在正经历巨变的企业中，这尤其有用，因为这些企业需要指令控制型和关怀分享型领导的结合。其次，女性和男性在给他们的工作带来价值上的差异要多于他们在领导风格上的差异。同情心和公平公正对女性的影响远多于对男性的影响。

　　That leads to the second consideration: that both male and female managers are perfectly capable of adapting their leadership styles to meet changing circumstances. Male managers are increasingly embracing a collaborative approach to leadership, as they adapt to a society that has become less deferential. In a 2013 study of 917 managers in Norway-a country that has led the way in female-friendly policies, from board quotas to public child care-Ann Grethe Solberb, a sociologist, concluded that: “Men and women don’t have different styles of leadership.”

　　这就导向了第二种考察：男性和女性主管都很善于调整自己的领导风格来适应变化的环境。男性主管正在适应一个不再那么讲究恭敬顺从的社会，他们越来越多地采纳协作的领导方式。2013年，社会学家安妮·格雷特·索尔贝格(Anne Grethe Solberg)在一项对挪威917名主管的调研中总结道：“男性和女性的领导风格并无不同。”从董事会的女性比例到公共儿童保健等等，挪威在女性友好政策上都走在世界的前列。