Abstract
Our research examines which factors enable women to relate to and aspire for stereotype-inconsistent roles, like leadership. Across two studies, we tested the effects of supervisor gender and supervisor characteristics on women's social comparisons and their leadership aspiration. Our first survey study (N = 303) found that women had higher social comparisons with communal supervisors irrespective of supervisor gender. Our second experiment (N = 465) found that women had higher social comparisons with female supervisors and with communal supervisors. Overall, we found that social comparisons serve as a mediator that enhances women's leadership aspiration. By focusing on social comparisons as a psychological mechanism, we address the value of stereotype-inconsistent supervisors as presenting women with the opportunity to relate to such exemplars and envision occupying roles that dismantle existing gender-leader stereotypes through increased leadership aspiration.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
