EFFECTS OF SUBORDINATES’ GENDER ON FEMALE PROFESSIONALS’ APPRAISAL OF A PROSPECTIVE LEADERSHIP POSITION

Although decades of research show how gender bias raises unique challenges for women in leadership position, less work has examined the potentially deterrent effects that anticipation of these challenges has on women’s appraisal of prospective leadership positions. This project takes a closer look at the contextual features of job opportunities to examine how future subordinates’ gender differentially affects men’s and women’s assessment of a prospective leadership position. We find that female—but not male—professionals’ attitude toward a prospective leadership position becomes less favorable as the ratio of opposite sex to same sex future subordinates increases. To explain this phenomenon, we root our analysis in a status perspective of gender and provide evidence that female professionals anticipate more conflict with male subordinates, who they expect will be more likely to challenge the legitimacy of a woman’s authority and less likely to cooperate under their leadership.