REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1586457
A WICS-Based Model for Women's Leadership
Provisionally accepted
- 1New York University, New York City, United States
- 2Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States
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Men have typically dominated in leadership positions for what we have of recorded history; hence, leadership has been a concept whose study has revolved mostly around men. Nowadays, however, more and more women are emerging in the political field (as well as in other fields), taking up significant political and other roles, including leading political parties and countries.Women and men often differ in their leadership styles. Both men and women have, on average, variegated patterns of strengths and weaknesses. This article examines characteristics of successful women leaders. The article discusses and analyzes these characteristics, using as a theoretical framework the Wisdom-Intelligence-Creativity-Synthesized (WICS) model of leadership. Present and recent leaders like Jacinda Ardern, Sanna Marin, Ursula von der Leyen, and more, will be discussed in relation to the proposed characteristics. The proposed characteristics include, among others, the three C's of consideration, caring, and compassion; humility; unity; diplomacy; and resilience to the misogynistic critiques they often receive. Of course, it is of great significance to mention that no leader is perfect, and like all leaders, the aforementioned ones did some things in their leadership positions that worked and other things that did not.
Keywords: Leadership, women leadership, Leadership Trait Analysis, wisdom-intelligencecreativity-synthesized, WICS
Received: 02 Mar 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Papadakou and Sternberg. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Christiana Papadakou, New York University, New York City, United States
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