It’s time to take a stand for leaders. Yes, it can be great to know a large number of bosses or even bosses about you. This gives the infantry the opportunity to fraternize or become sisters in the coffee kitchen, at the copier or in the canteen with colleagues against a shared enemy image. Hardly anything brings people together like the common feeling of finding someone stupid. In addition, it also relieves the soul when there is a scapegoat to whom all responsibility can be dumped in the event of failure. But now there is a detail that could complicate this situation. Like behavioral scientists in the journal Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization to report, female executives in particular can count on great forbearance in the event of failure – in contrast to men. In other words: In a collective, it is perhaps easier to nag about bosses than about women bosses. But even this observed mildness, the scientists believe, reflects sexism towards women.
The behavioral economists led by economist Lata Gangadharan from Australia’s Monash University divided 350 subjects into teams of three for their study. One of the participants was then chosen to be the manager whose performance was to be evaluated by the other two. The chief of the threesome had to make an investment decision that would allow him to increase the group’s profits at the cost of increased personal financial risk. With a certain probability the decision went wrong. The two subordinates had to evaluate their superior’s performance. In addition to the result of the investment, they only found out whether they were managed by a man or a woman. Ultimately, that was the question the researchers were interested in: How does gender affect a leader’s evaluation?
Men in particular took the gender of their superiors into account
If the executives achieved a good result for their group, their gender did not significantly influence the judgment of the infantry duo: it did not matter whether a woman or a man had performed well. In the case of failure, however, it was different. Men’s failures were explained by selfishness, women’s by bad luck. In the case of bosses, it should have been character deficits that provoked the bad result. Bosses, on the other hand, were released from responsibility with reference to the circumstances. “Men were blamed more,” says Boon Han Koh of Britain’s University of East Anglia, who was involved in the study.
The effect was largely driven by the responses of male participants: they, in particular, offered apologetic leniency to female executives in the study. Men may have the feeling that women should be treated preferentially, says economist Nisvan Erkal from the University of Melbourne, who was also involved in the study. In this case, it was “benevolent sexism,” fueled by the assumption that women needed special protection, the researchers said.
However, the study does not take into account the question of whether the male participants simply gave the answers that they considered socially desirable. It may be that they feared being misogynistic if they criticized a woman. It may be less risky to scold male bosses.