Who Can Be a Leader?: How Race Moderates the Expression of Sexism

Previous research asserting that Black and White female leaders face different amounts of backlash as a result of different stereotype content has relied largely on the White-Black racial dichotomy utilizing White participants. It has thus not disentangled this explanation from an explanation based on the racial group membership of both perceivers and targets. We propose that differences in how individuals enforce gender norms towards racial in-group and racial out-group members drives this effect. We find that although evaluations of targets vary as a function of their behavior and participants' own gender beliefs, consistent with previous theory, this relationship holds true only when White participants view White but not Black or Asian targets, a novel finding. This is evidence against a stereotype content account of differential experiences of sexism by women of different races and supports the idea that the racial group membership of both targets and perceivers drives this effect.