FEMALE LEADERSHIP: EFFECTIVENESS AND PERCEPTION

Maria De Paola (), Francesca Gioia () and Vincenzo Scoppa ()

No 202103, Working Papers from Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF

Abstract: We ran a field experiment to investigate whether individual performance in teams depended on the gender of the leader. About 430 students from an Italian University took an intermediate exam that was partly evaluated on the basis of teamwork. Students were randomly matched in teams of three and, in each team, we randomly chose a leader entrusted the task of coordinating the work of the team. We find a positive and significant effect of female leadership on team performance. This effect is driven by the higher performance of team members in female-led teams rather than by an improvement in leader performance, suggesting that female leaders altruistically devote their energies o improving teamwork. In spite of the higher performance of female-led teams, male members tended to evaluate female leaders as less effective, whereas female members have provided more favorable judgments.

Keywords: Team; Leadership; Gender; Stereotypes; Randomized Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J16 M12 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gen and nep-hrm
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http://www.ecostat.unical.it/RePEc/WorkingPapers/WP03_2021.pdf First version, 2021-03 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Female leadership: Effectiveness and perception (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:clb:wpaper:202103

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