Leadership femminile: la nascita di nuove donne leader e le sfide odierne dell'emancipazione femminile. ​

The aim of this dissertation is the analysis of the state of female leadership and empowerment, especially in politics and in some developing countries. Literature about leadership is quite recent but is able to explain how the issue of being a leader has been changing over the past centuries. Several theories (or styles) were developed around the subject, each of them the product of the context and the period they had being introduced. Leadership is a rising discipline in man-agement because leadership significantly accounts for a successful and satisfactory run of business organizations. Nevertheless, the common denominator of all leader-ship theories, so far, has always been gender discrimination. Female leadership and female empowerment are widely discussed topics and today deserve more attention than ever. Leadership is not necessarily linked to a command and/or control position, neither it is the mere presence of some personality traits, rather it’s a set of actions that enable who is managing other people to guide them towards the fulfillment of some activities or the achievement of some goals. To understand better the level of female empowerment, studying the role of politics is central: politicians are powerful and influential people that not only can shape the government or institutions, but also can shape the minds of their audience, and act as role models. Politics is not any longer exclusively a male arena, rather the world is witnessing an incremental female participation, and some very successful women have a seat in some of the most important institutions worldwide. Although the in-crease in women participation in leadership seems to be the result of the modern era, things get more complicated regarding the underdeveloped or developing countries, thanks to a higher degree of social, cultural and economic barriers.