Inclusive Leadership and Organisational Commitment: A Focus on the Role of Women

Abstract

Diversity is a concept that cannot separate from the workplace setting that involves different people; each individual is diverse in gender, ethnicity, age, education, qualification, race, and personality, to mention a few. Individuals are members of different groups and gender, which highly influences values and self-concepts. This is coupled with the fact that Nigeria is a patriarchal country where males hold dominant power dominate in political leadership roles, authority, privileges and control of the property, thereby creating a glass ceiling for women in the workplace. However, workplace gender inclusion needs to make co-workers of all races, diverse teams, gender, ethnicities, and nationalities optimise various individuals' performance where employees feel included or excluded. This suggests that workplace gender inclusion that carefully includes all stakeholders' contributions in the organisation, which is a two-way relationship rather than one that depends on respect, recognition, responsiveness, responsibility, goal achievement, and interdependency amongst individuals, is needful. Thus, this study examined women's role in promoting inclusive leadership and organisational commitment in Nigeria, where stereotyping of women and men's characteristics and roles exist firmly in society, using relevant literature as the research method. The study found out that inclusive culture, open communication, favouritism and use of gendered language, amongst others, affect the effectiveness of inclusive leadership and organisational commitment. Therefore, the paper recommended that to get everybody included and committed irrespective of gender to optimise performance, women's behaviour and thinking patterns must change. Women should stop seeing managerial positions as "men's", and serve as role models to the younger generation of women by helping them understand themselves and their rapid changing roles in the new technological age and must be resilient & courageous.