The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1 - 32

work of how gender differences affect the resident assistant position, and there is very little
that addresses sex or gender differences within
the population of students the RA supervises.
Similarly, Posner and Brodsky's (1993) statistical analysis of resident assistant effectiveness
ignored gender differences. Although gender
data was collected for demographic purposes,
they did not use this data in their analysis of
student, individual, and employer evaluation
of resident assistant effectiveness.
It is possible that these researchers are
simply assuming that the resident assistant
position is a manifest form of the student leadership position explored in traditional leadership literature (Bass & Stogdill, 1981; Borgatta,
Bales, & Couch, 1954; Chapman, 1975; Hollander, 1961) and is therefore subject to traditional analysis of leaders and leadership. If
this is the case, then these researchers could
be applying a traditional Western understanding of leadership to this highly specialized and
derived manifestation of the leadership paradigm. The traditional leadership view often
excludes females as proper peer leaders and
instead places them in a special class within
the larger group of follower. Though Bass and
Stogdill's (1990) Handbook of Leadership is
widely regarded as a guiding work in the ﬁeld
of leadership research, in this expansive text,
women are allotted only one short chapter,
and this chapter is included in the "Diverse
Groups" section of the text.
This application of previously understood
social leadership roles to a new environment
may have a great inﬂuence on the way postsecondary students understand leadership roles.
Dasgupta and Asgari (2004) explore the idea of
the social engineering of leadership roles when

they show how exposure to counter-stereotypic
leaders changes the way that individuals evaluate leaders overall. When exposed to strong and
effective female leaders, individuals showed a
measured difference in the way they evaluated
them. The ﬁndings in each of these research
studies demonstrate that the social construction
of leaders has a great inﬂuence on the acceptability of females in leadership roles overall.
Social stereotypes surrounding gender
and leadership may be especially apparent for
student leadership in postsecondary institutions. This age group has been shown to harbor
previously formed social understandings about
sex, gender, and leadership (Heilman, 2001;
Lips, 2001; Ridgeway, 2001; Rosenkrantz et al.,
1968). Having learned these gender-speciﬁc
roles while growing up, and often with direct

carried into the surrogate household
of postsecondary residence living,
then the individuals who are
surrogate parents and have the
learned gender roles of parents
thrust upon them. For mothers
and female surrogates, gender role
assumptions are those of child
nurturance, selﬂessness, and overarching concern for others.

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1