A role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders proposes that perceived incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles leads to 2 forms of prejudice: (a) perceiving women less favorably than men as potential occupants of leadership roles and (b) evaluating behavior that fulfills the prescriptions of a leader role less favorably when it is enacted by a woman. One consequence is that attitudes are less positive toward female than male leaders and potential leaders. Other consequences are that it is more difficult for women to become leaders and to achieve success in leadership roles. Evidence from varied research paradigms substantiates that these consequences occur, especially in situations that heighten perceptions of incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles.

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Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders.

Research comparing the leadership styles of women and men is reviewed, and evidence is found for both the presence and the absence of differences between the sexes. In contrast to the gender-stereotypic expectation that women lead in an interpersonaily oriented style and men in a task-oriented style, female and male leaders did not differ in these two styles in organizational studies. However, these aspects of leadership style were somewhat gender stereotypic in the two other classes of leadership studies investigated, namely (a) laboratory experiments and (b) assessment studies, which were denned as research that assessed the leadership styles of people not selected for occupancy of leadership roles. Consistent with stereotypic expectations about a different aspect of leadership style, the tendency to lead democratically or autocratically, women tended to adopt a more democratic or participative style and a less autocratic or directive style than did men. This sex difference appeared in all three classes of leadership studies, including those conducted in organizations. These and other findings are interpreted in terms of a social role theory of sex differences in social behavior.

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Gender and Leadership Style: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis of 45 studies of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles found that female leaders were more transformational than male leaders and also engaged in more of the contingent reward behaviors that are a component of transactional leadership. Male leaders were generally more likely to manifest the other aspects of transactional leadership (active and passive management by exception) and laissez-faire leadership. Although these differences between male and female leaders were small, the implications of these findings are encouraging for female leadership because other research has established that all of the aspects of leadership style on which women exceeded men relate positively to leaders' effectiveness whereas all of the aspects on which men exceeded women have negative or null relations to effectiveness.

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Transformational, Transactional, and Laissez-Faire Leadership Styles: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Women and Men

This article reviews research on the evaluation of women and men who occupy leadership roles. In these experiments, the characteristics of leaders other than their sex were field constant, and the sex of the leader was varied. These experiments thus investigated whether people are biased against female leaders and managers. Although this research showed only a small overall tendency for subjects to evaluate female leaders less favorably than male leaders, this tendency was more pronounced under certain circumstances

Gender and the evaluation of leaders: A meta-analysis.

The origins of sex differences in human behavior can lie mainly in evolved dispositions that differ by sex or mainly in the differing placement of women and men in the social structure. The present article contrasts these 2 origin theories of sex differences and illustrates the explanatory power of each to account for the overall differences between the mate selection preferences of men and women. Although this research area often has been interpreted as providing evidence for evolved dispositions, a reanalysis of D. M. Buss's (1989a) study of sex differences in the attributes valued in potential mates in 37 cultures yielded cross-cultural variation that supports the social structural account of sex differences in mate preferences.

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The origins of sex differences in human behavior: Evolved dispositions versus social roles

We propose that sexual harassment of women at work is often a product of sex-role spillover, which is defined as the carryover into the workplace of gender-based expectations for behavior that are irrelevant or inappropriate to work. We argue that, when the sex-ratio at work is skewed—in either direction—sex-role spillover occurs. Thus, women in male-dominated work experience one kind of sex-role spillover. They are “role deviates” who are treated differently from other (male) work-role occupants; they are aware of this differential treatment, and they think it is directed at them as individual women rather than as work-role occupants. On the other hand, women in female-dominated work also experience sex-role spillover but of a different kind. Sex-role and work-role are practically identical. These women are treated similarly to other (female) work-role occupants, so are unaware that their treatment is based on sex-role. Because of this, they think the treatment they receive is a function of their job; the job itself is sexualized. Data from a representative sample survey, about sexual harassment of working women in Los Angeles County, provide some support for these ideas.

Bruce Morasch

Papers

Sex-ratios, sex-role spillover, and sexual harassment of women at work.

Interpreting social-sexual behavior in a work setting