A Systematic Review of Benefits, Challenges, and Contextual Factors of Female Leadership

This study presents a systematic literature review on the positive and negative impacts of female leadership in organizational contexts, that aims to address the the positive and negative impacts of female leadership in one comprehensive literature review. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, articles were retrieved from the Scopus database using keywords related to female leadership, organizational performance, governance, sustainability, innovation, barriers, and leadership outcomes. From an initial pool of 801 articles, 17 studies met the inclusion criteria. The findings show that female leadership is mostly associated with positive organizational outcomes, including improved sustainability orientation, innovation, crisis response, employee well-being, team effectiveness, and governance quality. However, the review also identifies several negative or mixed outcomes, particularly in contexts involving tokenistic appointments, gender stereotypes, board-level conflict, and limited institutional support. The study contributes by integrating positive and negative findings into a more balanced framework and by showing that the impact of female leadership depends strongly on organizational context, legitimacy, and support mechanisms.