THE INFLUENCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, RESILIENCE, AND NETWORKING ON WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS

Abstract

Despite the efforts of various organizations to make their leadership positions, at least to some extent, gender-diverse, entry barriers such as bias and lack of mentorship exist. The present study fills an important gap left by earlier studies, which examine emotional intelligence (EI), resilience, and networking as separate predictors of women's leadership effectiveness (WLE); however, this study examines these variables jointly. The research is conducted, particularly in universities and colleges, to explore how psychological and social resources help women thrive critical leadership scenarios during their education.

It was a cross-sectional survey using 291 students from District Khairpur enrolling Likert-scale questionnaires analyzed through SPSS. Reliability showed .914 using Cronbach's alpha. Resilience was the strongest predictor of WLE (β = .787), with emotional intelligence following (β = .167), and then networking (β = .054). The variance accounted for by the model is 98.6%. among findings a high correlation between EI and resilience (r = .931) was observed, supporting the assertion that these factors jointly contribute to adaptive leadership. While EI, and resilience were stronger predictors of WLE, networking plays a lesser role on its own, acting more as a structural form of support when combined with EI and resilience.

Thus, the study proposes that training should simultaneously address EI, resilience, and networking, as these domains should not be treated as separate clusters of competencies. Instead, they should be integrated to build individual capacities and enable participants to overcome systemic barriers. This concepts and practically gives a way for gender-inclusive leadership thereby focusing novel opportunities which could possibly serve as triggering points for training in a more integrated manner