Still “A Man's World”? Gendered Leadership Stereotypes in a Female-Dominated Public Sector

Being a ‘good manager’ has traditionally been associated with agentic traits creating barriers for women in leadership. More recent research suggests a growing appreciation for communal leadership characteristics, yet these findings stem from business settings and rarely consider differences across managerial levels. This study addresses these gaps by investigating what constitutes a ‘good manager’ in the female-dominated healthcare sector and how this prototype differs across hierarchical levels. We conducted a survey experiment among 3,432 Dutch healthcare employees to assess preferences for agentic and communal characteristics, randomly assigning respondents to rate either a lower- or a higher-level manager. Our findings show that, on average, respondents do not significantly prefer agentic over communal characteristics or vice versa—aligning with the observed shift towards an ‘androgynous’ leader profile. Importantly, as predicted, leadership preferences vary by managerial level such that for lower-level managers, respondents value communal over agentic characteristics, while for higher-level managers, respondents value agentic over communal characteristics. In post-hoc analysis, we show that male employees prefer agentic over communal characteristics, whereas female employees prefer communal over agentic characteristics; and that managers prefer agentic over communal characteristics, whereas non-managers prefer communal over agentic characteristics. However, the association between traits and managerial level held consistently across respondents. These findings expand our understanding of gendered leadership stereotypes and suggest that while gendered stereotypes are declining, subtle yet important hierarchy-based differences indicate that persistent barriers remain for women aspiring top leadership positions.