Agentic Women and Communal Leadership: How Role Prescriptions Confer Advantage to Top Women Leaders

This paper investigates the conditions under which a female leadership advantage might emerge. While traditional role congruity theory suggests that women face disadvantages due to a perceived mismatch between feminine traits and masculine leadership requirements, the authors explore whether top-level positions and successful performance outcomes might reverse this bias.

The authors conducted two experiments. In Study 1, they manipulated the gender of a CEO, the company's performance, and the attribution of that performance (internal vs. external) to see how these factors influenced perceptions of agentic (competence-based) and communal (warmth-based) traits. Study 2 expanded this by comparing top-level leaders with middle managers and testing the mediating roles of perceived double standards and expectations of feminized management skills.

The researchers found a qualified female leadership advantage. When women in top-level positions were credited with organizational success, they were rated as both more agentic and more communal than their male peers. This "advantage" did not appear for women in middle management, suggesting that the status associated with top-level roles is a critical moderator. The study demonstrates that for top women, the perception of having overcome double standards boosts their agentic ratings, while the expectation that they utilize "feminized" management tactics (such as coaching and relationship-building) boosts their communal ratings. Together, these factors lead to higher overall evaluations of leadership effectiveness.

This research challenges the prevailing view that women leaders are universally disadvantaged by gender stereotypes. By identifying that the "glass ceiling" can sometimes be followed by a "leadership advantage" for successful women, the study provides a more nuanced understanding of how organizational context and performance attribution shape gender-based evaluations. It suggests that as women reach the highest levels of an organization, their perceived competence and warmth can become mutually reinforcing rather than contradictory.