Digital Transformation, Leadership, and Gender Equality: Are They Related?

This chapter addresses the question of how digital transformation is related to leadership and gender equality. The literature argues that people-oriented, transformational leadership is the key to employee innovativeness and digital transformation success. Existing research supports the finding that women often engage in more committed and effective leadership than men, especially in exercising a more people-oriented, transformational leadership. Following these arguments, we theorize that women leaders are associated with a higher level of digital transformation. We gathered data from reliable international sources (e.g., the UN, EU, and OECD) to investigate the linkage. Based on the regression analysis, we find that countries with a high proportion of women in mid- to upper-level management positions tend to have a higher level of digital technology integration in their businesses and more sophisticated ICT tasks performed by women at work, even after controlling for the general size of each country’s economy, productivity, R&D intensity, human capital, and general level of gender equality. Japan is behind in digital technology integration in businesses compared to other developed countries and has the lowest ratio of women business leaders, while fewer Japanese women work in tasks that require a high level of digital skills. Our analysis suggests that if Japan were to improve gender equality in leadership positions, its digital economy performance would be comparable to that of other developed countries. An implication is that Japanese firms have yet to fully utilize the high-quality human capital that women represent, which may deter its digital transformation advancement.