When are women willing to lead? The effect of team gender composition and gendered tasks

Jingnan Chen,Daniel Houser

doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101340

Jingnan Chen, Daniel Houser

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101340

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Abstract

It is a well-documented phenomenon that a group's gender composition can impact group performance. Understanding why and how this phenomenon happens is a prominent puzzle in the literature. To shed light on this puzzle, we propose and experimentally test one novel theory: through the salience of gender stereotype, a group's gender composition affects a person's willingness to lead a group, thereby impacting the group's overall performance. By randomly assigning people to groups with varying gender compositions, we find that women in mixed-gender groups are twice as likely as women in single-gender groups to suffer from the gender stereotype effect, by shying away from leadership in areas that are gender-incongruent. Further, we provide evidence that the gender stereotype effect persists even for women in single-gender groups. Importantly, however, we find that public feedback about a capable woman's performance significantly increases her willingness to lead. This result holds even in male-stereotyped environments.

Highlights

The gender composition of teams, and how it impacts organizational outcomes, has attracted increasing attention in the media and the leadership literature
We explore why a group's gender composition is likely to influence its performance through gender stereotype effect (GSE)
Whereas previous key contributions have focused on the personality traits of leaders (e.g., Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002), we focus instead on features of the environment that shape incentives for individuals to pursue leadership (Zehnder, Herz, & Bonardi, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

The gender composition of teams, and how it impacts organizational outcomes, has attracted increasing attention in the media and the leadership literature. For example, people have heatedly debated the benefits of increasing the female presence on boards, and the merits of gender diversity in leadership. For example, people have heatedly debated the benefits of increasing the female presence on boards, and the merits of gender diversity in leadership1 It is well-substantiated that female and male leaders differ systematically in their core values, leadership style and risk attitudes (cf., Adams, Funk, Barber, Ho, & Odean, 2012; Druskat, 1994; Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992). Genderbased expectations, founded in stereotype bias, can impact who people regard as “fitting” for leadership roles, and a person's willingness to lead (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Hoyt & Blascovich, 2010; Hoyt & Murphy, 2016)

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