You Don’T Tell Me What To Do: The Status Implications For Younger Female Managers of Providing Feedback

Female and younger managers face many difficulties in navigating organizational life. In the present research, we aim to investigate the intersection of gender and relative age (i.e., the age difference between leader and employee) by integrating status and intersectional perspectives. We propose that the feedback provided by relatively younger female leaders will be the least accepted by employees due to lower ascribed social status. We further propose that this experience of being in a powerful position but with lower status leads to a reinforcing cycle that negatively affects the quality of the feedback managers provide. A time-lagged study with 347 employees supported our predictions. These findings help broaden our understanding of the obstacles that younger female managers face in organizations.