“The lady vanishes”: some thoughts on women and leadership

Purpose This paper is concerned with some speculations and observations on the position of women in relationship to leadership roles in organizations. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a theoretical piece. It attempts to analyse some of the reasons why women find it difficult to attain leadership roles and reflects on the costs to them when they do. Findings It considers why women are considered a threat to organizations and why organizations seek to subject women to the therapeutic imperative of rationality as the price of membership and of “success”. Put simply, it considers how women have to demonstrate male characteristics in order to “succeed” as leaders and must set aside feminine qualities: to live hyper‐abstractly “in order thus to earn divine grace and homologation with the symbolic order”. This results in an irresolvable lack in terms of what the organization desires for its completion. Originality/value Leadership is defined by the phallus and women's leadership by its absence. The woman vanishes.