Abstract
In two pre-registered studies (N = 1,202), female college students expressed greater feelings of belonging and trust in a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) company whose leaders exhibited stereotypically feminine (vs. masculine) characteristics. The positive impact of feminine leaders was found for both female and male leaders and was mediated by participants’ felt similarity to the leaders. This mediation model held even after controlling for other perceptions of leaders, such as perceived communality. The findings in this article extend past research on men as identity-safety cues for women in STEM and suggest that promoting leaders’ femininity could be an effective strategy to increase women’s identification with STEM.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
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.
