African American Women Executives and 21st-century Organizational Leadership: Deconstructing “Masculine” and “Feminine” Leadership, Embracing Duality in Leadership Practice

Part III brings together the major themes of this book, demonstrating that the leadership traditions revealed in the history of Black women in America are exemplified in contemporary African American women’s leadership approaches. Drawing upon case studies of 15 African American women executives who came of age during the era of the Civil Rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, I demonstrate how these traditions can inform leadership in the context of 21st-century organizations. The contemporary vision of organizational leadership that emerges from the women’s experiences disrupts traditional masculine and feminine notions of leadership and other leadership dualisms, and shifts the focus to a both/and approach to leadership practice in the era of postindustrialization and globalization.