Gendered Constructions of Leadership in Danish Job Advertisements

The purpose of this article is to consider the gender imbalance at top management level from a discourse analytical perspective. More specifically, it investigates the language of 39 D anish top executive job advertisements and considers which leadership identities are projected as desirable or necessary. This is done by carrying out two interlinked studies: a semantic field analysis of the sections in the job advertisements describing the leadership traits of the ideal candidate ( S tudy 1) and a study of MBA students' responses to extracts from the advertisements as far as gender is concerned ( S tudy 2). Semantic field analysis reveals that all the job advertisements are gender‐biased and that most traits described in the advertisements are associated with traditional or stereotypical masculine attributes. Study 2 confirms this finding, as respondents ( MBA students) assign a masculine identity to the vast majority of the extracts from the job advertisements.