Available online 1 February 2024

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Why are women underrepresented in positions of leadership? According to the “think manager-think male” model, leaders are stereotyped as male—and, in turn, as dominant—and this stereotype translates into preferences. However, status and leadership can be attained not only by dominance but also by prestige—a less sex-typed pathway. Five studies explored the relationship between leader stereotypes and preferences. University students spontaneously imagined both dominant and prestigious leaders as men (Study 1A, N = 148)—and this generalized across occupational domains (Study 1B, N = 220). However, they preferred women and prestigious leaders over men and dominant leaders. Study 2 (N = 2692) found this preference for female over male leaders using a large nationally representative U.S. sample from the Pew American Trends Panel. Study 3 (N = 461) experimentally replicated the preference for prestigious female over dominant male leader candidates among university students. In Study 4, (N = 952) online MTurk participants judged politicians from face photographs and again showed a preference for women, which may have partially been due to the inference that women are more likely to use prestige- over dominance-based leadership strategies. Collectively, findings suggest that the belief that people prefer “alpha male” leaders, which might discourage women from pursuing leadership roles and others from nominating them, needs to be updated.

Section snippetsLeader stereotypes and preferences

According to prominent accounts, the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles is due to a stereotype of leaders as men and as dominant, which in turn translates into a prescriptive norm and/or preference for such leaders (e.g., Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman, 2012). Schein (2001), reviewing data collected over several decades in the U.S., Britain, Germany, China, and Japan, observed what she dubbed a “think manager-think male” phenomenon: “If the managerial position is viewed as a

Leadership through an evolutionary lens

Across a wide range of species, males are more likely than females to engage in agonistic intra-sexual competitions to attract mates, including by controlling territory and rising in social hierarchies (King et al., 2009; Sadalla et al., 1987; Trivers, 1972). Trivers (1972) theorized that this sex difference can be explained by the basic principle of parental investment: in species in which one sex has a higher obligatory parental investment in offspring, the higher-investing sex typically

The present research

We consider two questions. First, given declines of sex- and gender-based stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination (Charlesworth & Banaji, 2021; Schaerer et al., 2023), the increased representation of women in positions of leadership, and the “androgenization” of the leader stereotype (Koenig et al., 2011), to what extent do people nowadays still stereotype leaders as men, and as dominant? Second, to the extent that this “alpha male” stereotype of leaders persists, does it translate into

Study 1A

Although there are still fewer women than men in many leadership roles, female representation in business and politics has risen substantially in the U.S. over recent decades. For example, the proportion of female Fortune 500 CEOs increased eighteen-fold since 2000 (Pew Research Center, 2021), and the proportion of women in the U.S. congress doubled during this period (Center for American Women and Politics, 2021). Further, analyses of U.S. public opinion polls from 1946 through 2018 suggest

Study 1B

In Study 1A, participants could have imagined leaders in any domain. However, previous findings suggest that preferences for alpha males, and therefore potentially also the alpha male stereotype of leaders, may exist more in some domains than others. For example, it has been suggested that dominant leaders are preferred during war—during which physical formidability and aggression would have been ancestrally useful tools for achieving the goals of the group—but that prestigious leaders are

Study 2

Study 1A and 1B suggest a disjunction between leader stereotypes and preferences. But perhaps these preferences were due to the specifics of our samples? Study 2 investigated whether the preference for female over male leaders held up in a large and nationally representative U.S. sample using archival data from the Pew Research Center (Horowitz, Igielnik, & Parker, 2018; Pew Research Center, 2018). (See Appendix C for complete details.)

Between June 19–July 2, 2018, 2692 participants were asked

Study 3

In Studies 1 A-B, participants spontaneously imagined people who already occupied leadership positions. However, women may face more difficulties than men in attaining such positions in the first place. Regarding political leaders, for example, it has been argued that “women…have to be ‘better’ than men in order to fare equally well” (Lawless & Pearson, 2008, p. 78). When participants in Study 1 imagined female leaders, perhaps they imagined women who were more qualified than the men. The aim

Study 4

Study 4 aimed to replicate the disjunction between leader stereotypes and preferences using a new method: judgments about actual politicians from photographs of their faces. Prior research finds considerable inter-rater agreement when people judge traits such as dominance from faces on the basis of features such as prominent brow ridges, strong jawlines, and thin lips (Todorov et al., 2015). Additionally, going beyond our earlier studies, in which dominance and prestige were each measured using

General discussion

We opened by asking why women continue to be underrepresented as leaders in arenas such as politics and business. According to the classic “think manager-think male” model, maleness and dominance are associated with leadership because people see more “alpha males” than prestigious women in leadership roles, and this association leads to the presumption—among voters in political elections or those making personnel decisions in organizations—that men are better suited to those roles than are

Conclusion

The disjunction between leader stereotypes and preferences suggests it is time to update our models of sex, dominance, and leadership (also see Cheng, 2020; Case & Maner, 2015; Durkee et al., 2020; Witkower et al., 2020). Social scientists might be well advised to shift the focus from “alpha males” to a broader appreciation of the importance of female leadership and prestige, which may be a less sex-typed pathway to leadership than dominance. In the interest of recruiting more female leaders

Pew research data disclaimer

Pew Research Center bears no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations of the data presented here. The opinions expressed herein, including any implications for policy, are those of the authors and not of Pew Research Center.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Adi Wiezel: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Michael Barlev: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Christopher R. Martos: Investigation. Douglas T. Kenrick: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Writing –

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Acknowledgments

Data collection and manuscript development was supported by funding to Douglas T. Kenrick's Arizona State University President's Professor Grant.

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