Trevor Archer, Ann-Christine Arntén, Klaus Olsen and Bengt Jansson
The rationale behind the present study was to analyse the self-reported responses to the JobMatchTalent (JMT) instrument describing personal attributes of male and female applicants seeking recruitment to executive leadership positions in combination with age levels in order to extract any consistent gender differences that may have arisen. “Willingness-to-take-risks” was observed to be the single attribute upon which female and male applicants differ with the latter expressing a greater extent. None of the other attributes, including “humor-equilibrium”, “resilience”, “will-power”, “stamina”, “initiative”, “assent-image” and “openness” differed between the genders. Taking into account previous notions regarding the differential capacity of male and female leaders to withstand ‘stress-and-strain’, the present findings that concomitantly examine participants’ variations due to age, imply that leadership-strength attributes are modulated by age but not gender.