Abstract

Every woman has the quality to become a great leader with their leadership style. However, women’s representation as a leader in organizations is still low, especially in Southeast Asian countries. Hence, the focus of this paper is to explore the leadership styles among women leaders in government agencies and private organizations in Sabah. This paper applied the quantitative research method with a gender perspective, which was participated by 282 respondents in the survey. The results showed five leadership styles: democratic, autocratic, laissez-faire, transactional and transformational. Among those leadership styles, women in Sabah practised democratic, transactional, transformational and laissez-faire styles in leading their subordinates and organization. Meanwhile, autocratic is less applied by woman leaders in Sabah.


Keywords: Women leaders, leadership styles, government agencies, private organizations, quantitative method.