Heavier Lies Her Crown: Gendered Patterns of Leader Emotional Labor and Their Downstream Effects

Women use power in more prosocial ways than men and they also engage in more emotional labor (i.e., self-regulate their emotions to respond and attend to the needs and emotions of other people in a way that advances organizational goals). However, these two constructs have not been previously connected. We propose that gendered emotional labor practices and pressures result in gender differences in the prosocial use of power. We integrate the literature on emotional labor with research on the psychology of power to articulate three routes through which this happens. First, women may be more adept than men at the intrapersonal and interpersonal processes entailed in emotional labor practices—a skill that they can apply at all hierarchical levels. Second, given women’s stronger internal motivation to perform emotional labor, they construe power in a more interdependent manner than men, which promotes a more prosocial use of power. As a result, female powerholders tend to behave in more prosocial ways. Third, when they have power, women encounter stronger external motivation to engage in emotional labor, which effectively constrains powerful women’s behaviors in a way that fosters a more prosocial use of power. We discuss how, by promoting prosocial behavior among powerholders, emotional labor can be beneficial for subordinates and organizations (e.g., increase employee well-being and organizational trust), while simultaneously creating costs for individual powerholders, which may reduce women’s likelihood of actually attaining and retaining power by (a) making high-power roles less appealing, (b) guiding women toward less prestigious and (c) more precarious leadership roles, (d) draining powerful women’s time and resources without equitable rewards, and (e) making it difficult for women to legitimize their power in the eyes of subordinates (especially men). Thus, emotional labor practices can help explain the underrepresentation of women in top leadership positions.

The deficit bias: Candidate gender differences in the relative importance of facial stereotypic qualities to leadership hiring

Recent findings highlight two facets of the two fundamental stereotype content dimensions of agency (i.e., 'dominance' and 'competence') and communality (i.e., 'morality' and 'sociability'; e.g., Abele et al., 2016) with implications for understanding gender inequality in the workplace (e.g., Prati et al., 2019). Extending this research and contributing to the facial first impressions literature, we examined how these facets of agency and communality when inferred from White men's and women's faces, along with attractiveness, influence their leadership suitability. In three studies in the United Kingdom (total N = 424), using student and working samples and two managerial descriptions, we found an unexpected pattern of results, supported by an internal meta-analysis: attractiveness and competence were the most important predictors of hirability for all candidates. For women, dominance was the next most important predictor; for men, morality and sociability were more important than dominance. Moreover, morality and sociability were more important in evaluating men than women, while dominance was more important in evaluating women than men. Findings are discussed in terms of a 'deficit bias', whereby the qualities women and men are considered to lack - dominance for women, morality, and sociability for men - may be given more weight when evaluating their leadership suitability.

Executive Search Consultants' Biases Against Women (or Men?)

Women remain under-represented in leadership positions in many countries. Since executive search consultants (also known as headhunters) act as gatekeepers in the hiring process, headhunters' biases might influence the female under-representation. There is preliminary evidence that suggests headhunters favor men, but direct evidence is missing. Thus, this study directly tested this assumption using implicit and explicit measures (an implicit association test and a gender role attitudes survey), completed by 123 German executive search consultants. Although neither measure showed an anti-women bias (with the explicit measure being compared to a match sample from a representative survey using propensity score matching), the implicit association test showed an in-group bias (i.e., male headhunter had a stronger association of men and competence than of women and competence). The latter is worrisome because the majority of consultants in this business are men. Thus, organizations interested in more female managers need to carefully consider who they hire as their executive search consultants.

More guilty if woman: The role of gender and causal attribution in political scandals' impact

Political scandals can have a great impact for the perpetrator, but negative consequences may vary considerably depending on such factors as personal characteristics of the involved political actors or citizens' expectations. The present study investigated the effect of the gender of the politician involved in different kinds of scandals deriving from the transgression of gender role-based expectations and the role of participants' attribution of responsibility (internal vs. external) on their evaluation of the perpetrator. Results showed that participants did not express different evaluations of the female versus male politician when their behavior testified to a lack of qualities stereotypically associated to men and women. But when participants attributed the responsibility of the scandal to the perpetrator, women were punished more severely than their male colleagues. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Accuracy of consensual stereotypes in moral foundations: A gender analysis

The current study explored the accuracy of consensual moral stereotypes that women and men hold about each other, as well as whether the gender differences in morality found in previous literature replicate on a sample of Pakistani individuals. A sample of 300 was used with an equal number of men and women. Data from 50 of the respondents was collected online, whereas the rest was collected in person from universities. The 30-item Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ30) was used as a measure of five Moral Foundations, which are the basic elements of moral psychology as posited by Moral Foundations Theory. Men and women answered the questionnaire for themselves and then a second time, according to their perception of how a typical member of the other gender would respond which gave a measure of their stereotype. Comparison of actual scores of men and women revealed a statistically significant difference where women scored higher than men on the Harm foundation (p = 0.001). All other foundations, except for the Authority foundation showed the same pattern of differences as the previous literature, although they did not reach statistical significance. Stereotypes about men held by women were inaccurate underestimations on the Harm and Fairness foundations. The stereotype about women, held by men, was accurate on the Fairness foundation and inaccurate on the Authority foundation in the direction of underestimation. This research serves to further the study of Moral Foundations Theory as well as exploring the reasons behind the inaccurate moral stereotypes that men and women hold about each other, and actual gender differences in morality.

Rationality is Gendered

Shared rationality is the common ground of scientific progress. However, some theorists have argued that this common ground may not be level, in that subtle assumptions embedded within lay views of rationality marginalize some would-be participants. Specifically, feminist philosophers have argued that rationality is associated with male rather than female discourse. This claim has frequently been dismissed as incoherent, but a straightforward interpretation is readily available: The concept reason is semantically associated with the concept male. We support this hypothesis in four studies (total N > 900), finding that at both the explicit and implicit level, reason is preferentially associated withmale, feeling is preferentially associated withfemale, male faces prime unrelated judgments of reason/rationality, and gendered associations are related to interest in academic disciplines as well as estimates of the (mis)representation of women within those disciplines. Implications for gender stereotyping and the representation of women in different fields are discussed.

Unnecessary Frills: Communality as a Nice (But Expendable) Trait in Leaders

Although leader role expectations appear to have become relatively more compatible with stereotypically feminine attributes like empathy, women continue to be highly underrepresented in leadership roles. We posit that one reason for this disparity is that, whereas stereotypically feminine traits are appreciated as nice “add-ons” for leaders, it is stereotypically masculine attributes that are valued as the defining qualities of the leader role, especially by men (who are often the gatekeepers to these roles). We assessed men’s and women’s idea of a great leader with a focus on gendered attributes in two studies using different methodologies. In Study 1, we employed a novel paradigm in which participants were asked to design their “ideal leader” to examine the potential trade-off between leadership characteristics that were more stereotypically masculine (i.e., agency) and feminine (i.e., communality). Results showed that communality was valued in leaders only after meeting the more stereotypically masculine requirements of the role (i.e., competence and assertiveness), and that men in particular preferred leaders who were more competent (vs. communal), whereas women desired leaders who kept negative stereotypically masculine traits in check (e.g., arrogance). In Study 2, we conducted an experiment to examine men’s and women’s beliefs about the traits that would be important to help them personally succeed in a randomly assigned leader (vs. assistant) role, allowing us to draw a causal link between roles and trait importance. We found that both men and women viewed agentic traits as more important than communal traits to be a successful leader. Together, both studies make a valuable contribution to the social psychological literature on gender stereotyping and bias against female leaders and may illuminate the continued scarcity of women at the very top of organizations, broadly construed.