A role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders proposes that perceived incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles leads to 2 forms of prejudice: (a) perceiving women less favorably than men as potential occupants of leadership roles and (b) evaluating behavior that fulfills the prescriptions of a leader role less favorably when it is enacted by a woman. One consequence is that attitudes are less positive toward female than male leaders and potential leaders. Other consequences are that it is more difficult for women to become leaders and to achieve success in leadership roles. Evidence from varied research paradigms substantiates that these consequences occur, especially in situations that heighten perceptions of incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles. Role Congruity Theory: How Gender Roles and LeaderRoles Produce Two Types of PrejudiceIn general, prejudice can arise from the relations that people perceive between the characteristics of members of a social group

A meta-analysis of 45 studies of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles found that female leaders were more transformational than male leaders and also engaged in more of the contingent reward behaviors that are a component of transactional leadership. Male leaders were generally more likely to manifest the other aspects of transactional leadership (active and passive management by exception) and laissez-faire leadership. Although these differences between male and female leaders were small, the implications of these findings are encouraging for female leadership because other research has established that all of the aspects of leadership style on which women exceeded men relate positively to leaders' effectiveness whereas all of the aspects on which men exceeded women have negative or null relations to effectiveness.

Research comparing the leadership styles of women and men is reviewed, and evidence is found for both the presence and the absence of differences between the sexes. In contrast to the gender-stereotypic expectation that women lead in an interpersonally orientedstyle and men in a task-oriented style, female and male leaders did not differ in these two styles in organizationalstudies. However, these aspects of leadership style were somewhat gender stereotypic in the two other classes of leadership studies investigated, namely (a) laboratory experiments and (b) assessment studies, which were defined as research that assessed the leadership styles of people not selected for occupancy of leadership roles. Consistent with stereotypic expectations about a different aspect of leadership style, the tendency to lead democratically or autocratically, women tended to adopt a more democratic or participative style and a less autocratic or directive style than did men. This sex difference appeared in all three classes of leadership studies, including those conducted in organizations. These and other findings are interpreted in terms of a social role theory of sex differences in social behavior.In recent years many social scientists, management consultants, and other writers have addressed the topic of gender and leadership style. Some authors with extensive experience in organizations who write nontechnical books for management audiences and the general public have argued for the presence of sex differences in leadership style. For example, Loden (1985) maintained that there is a masculine mode of management characterized by qualities such as competitiveness, hierarchical authority, high control for the leader, and unemotional and analytic problem solving. Loden argued that women prefer and tend to behave in terms of an alternative feminine leadership model characterized by cooperativeness, collaboration of managers and subordinates, lower control for the leader, and problem solving based on intuition and empathy as well as rationality. Loden's writing echoes the androgynous manager theme developed earlier by Sargent (198 l), who accepted the idea that women and men, including those who are managers in organizations, behave stereotypically to some extent. Sargent advocated that managers of each sex adopt "the best" of the other This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grants BNS-8605256 and BNS-8807495. Preliminary reports of this research were presented at the Annual Meetings of the Eastern Psychological Association, April 1988; the Midwestern Psychological Association, April 1988; the International Congress o f Psychology, September 1988; and the American Psychological Association, August 1989. A table showing the effect sizes and study characteristics for each study included in the meta-analysis is available from the first author.We thank Anna Fairchild for assistance in locating studies and in recording and checking data. We also thank Judith Hall, Edwin E Hollander, Judi Komaki, Louis Sternberg, Howard ...

This meta-analysis examined the extent to which stereotypes of leaders are culturally masculine. The primary studies fit into 1 of 3 paradigms: (a) In Schein's (1973) think manager-think male paradigm, 40 studies with 51 effect sizes compared the similarity of male and leader stereotypes and the similarity of female and leader stereotypes; (b) in Powell and Butterfield's (1979) agency-communion paradigm, 22 studies with 47 effect sizes compared stereotypes of leaders' agency and communion; and (c) in Shinar's (1975) masculinity-femininity paradigm, 7 studies with 101 effect sizes represented stereotypes of leadership-related occupations on a single masculinity-femininity dimension. Analyses implemented appropriate random and mixed effects models. All 3 paradigms demonstrated overall masculinity of leader stereotypes: (a) In the think manager-think male paradigm, intraclass correlation = .25 for the women-leaders similarity and intraclass correlation = .62 for the men-leaders similarity; (b) in the agency-communion paradigm, g = 1.55, indicating greater agency than communion; and (c) in the masculinity-femininity paradigm, g = 0.92, indicating greater masculinity than the androgynous scale midpoint. Subgroup and meta-regression analyses indicated that this masculine construal of leadership has decreased over time and was greater for male than female research participants. In addition, stereotypes portrayed leaders as less masculine in educational organizations than in other domains and in moderate- than in high-status leader roles. This article considers the relation of these findings to Eagly and Karau's (2002) role congruity theory, which proposed contextual influences on the incongruity between stereotypes of women and leaders. The implications for prejudice against women leaders are also considered.

According to stereotypic beliefs about the sexes, women are more communal (selfless and concerned with others) and less agentic (self-assertive and motivated to master) than men. These beliefs were hypothesized to stem from perceivers' observations of women and men in differing social roles: (a) Women are more likely than men to hold positions of lower status and authority, and (b) women are more likely than men to be homemakers and are less likely to be employed in the paid work force. Experiments 1 and 2 failed to support the hypothesis that observed sex differences in status underlie belief in female communal qualities and male agentic qualities. Experiment 3 supported the hypothesis that observed sex differences in distribution into homemaker and employee occupational roles account for these beliefs. In this experiment, subjects perceived the average woman and man stereotypically. Female and male homemakers were perceived as high in communion and low in agency. Female and male employees were perceived as low in communion and high in agency, although female employees were perceived as even more agentic than their male counterparts. Experiments 4 and 5 examined perceptions that might account for the belief that employed women are especially agentic: (a) A double burden of employment plus family responsibilities did not account for this belief, and (b) freedom of choice about being employed accounted for it reasonably well.Gender stereotypes, like other social stereotypes, reflect perceivers' observations of what people do in daily life. If perceivers often observe a particular group of people engaging in a particular activity, they are likely to believe that the abilities and personality attributes required to carry out that activity are typical of that group of people. For example, if perceivers consistently observe women caring for chil-