Bad news ladies. When asked by a Gallup poll if they prefer a female or male boss, just over half of Americans say they don’t have a preference, but those who do strongly lean towards men. Forty percent of women and 29 percent of men say they prefer a male boss over a female one. Unsurprisingly, conservative Republicans also prefer men to be in charge while democrats were more split down the middle. Why don’t people want to work for women?
Even though more women are advancing into managerial and executive positions, the world does still not see them as capable and likeable as men. Guardian writer Jill Fillpovic smartly pointed out that when people don’t like their male boss, they write it off as that individual failed. When people don’t like their female boss, the entire gender is criticized and put down.
As Sheryl Sandberg reminded us in Lean In, ambition has a positive connotation for men and a negative one for women. Ambition is practically synonymous with the “b word” when it comes to women, and Sandberg wants to change that. Women, especially those in authoritative positions, can often simply not win in the workplace.
Just look at the portrayal of female bosses in film and television. Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, Margaret Tate in The Proposal, Katherine Parker in Working Girl, etc., These women struggle with their powerful roles and the only way to deal with it is to be a deathly terrifying ice queen (who dresses great.)
“It’s a general cultural phenomenon, the preference for men leaders and bosses,” Alice Eagly, Ph.D., a social psychology professor at Northwestern University, told Forbes in 2010. She supposes that “leaders are thought to be people who are dominant and competitive and… confident. Those kinds of qualities are ascribed to men far more than women. Women are ascribed to be nice. We are, above all, nice.”
Read the full article and others from Levo League online.
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