Leadership Styles of Women Cabinet Ministers

This paper analyses political leadership styles of women cabinet ministers and the interaction with gender. An extensive study of all 33 women cabinet ministers of the Netherlands covering a time period of 60 years (1956-2016), including in-depth personal interviews and media-coverage, allows me to address the following questions: • Can different types of leadership style be distinguished? Does historical context influences leadership style? When they start, some of the 33 women cabinet ministers are all-rounders, some are specialists and some are generalists. How does their expertise relate to leadership style? • Cabinet ministers perform different roles such as head of a department, member of the cabinet, prominent party leader and political communicator. They interact on a daily basis with top civil servants, colleague ministers, members of parliament, party leadership, media and – less often - with citizens, all with their own ideas and expectations of how a political leader should act. What do these expectations entail and how gendered are they? For example, how do top civil servants and media react to the first-time nomination of a woman as minister for a specific portfolio? • Gender is the first reason why the 33 women are selected by the – all-male – selectorate. This was the case in 1956 and it still is in 2016. Given the importance of gender in the nomination, does gender permeates, and if so how, in leadership styles of women cabinet ministers? For example, do the women bond at cabinet meetings and do they commit to women’s interests in their policymaking? • Do the earlier women cabinet ministers and media deal differently with the zest for the leaders’ private life compared to the current women political leaders and media?