Men and women both prefer leadership traits that are stereotypically masculine, New York University researchers find.

This discovery could help to explain why women are still significantly underrepresented in leadership roles.

While women hold 52 percent of professional level jobs, they fill only 14.6 percent of executive officer positions.

It is a common stereotype that women in leadership roles tend to be more tolerant and cooperative, but the study shows that these communal leadership characteristics are desirable but mostly “superfluous add-ons.”

The majority of men and women believe successful leaders should demonstrate assertiveness and competitiveness, which are still misconstrued as masculine traits.

“When looking at the tradeoff that people make between communal and agency leadership traits, we found both men and women continue to see agentic traits as the hallmark of leadership. These are traits that are often associated more with men than with women,” Andrea Vial, a postdoctoral research associate at NYU and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

“The idea that one must be highly agentic in order to succeed as a leader could discourage women from pursuing a high-power role — and also discourage men from appointing women in such roles,” she continued.

The study

The researchers asked 273 men and women to pick traits that would describe their ideal leader.

The participants could pick from a list of stereotypically “agentic” masculine traits, which included being capable, competent, confident, common sense, intelligent, ambitious, assertive, competitive, decisive and self-reliant.

And they could pick from a list of stereotypically “communal” feminine traits, such as being  good-natured, sincere, tolerant, happy, trustworthy, cooperative, patient, polite, sensitive and cheerful.

When the amount of traits the participants could choose weren’t limited, they valued those that were stereotypically communal and feminine. However, when a cap was set on the number of traits the participants could pick, they generally viewed communality as a luxury and competence as more of a necessity.

When the participants were asked which negative qualities they would remove from a leader, they decided to get rid of stereotypically masculine traits, such as arrogance and stubbornness, before they got rid of stereotypically feminine traits, such as being shy or emotional.

In another test, the researchers asked a different group of 249 men and women to identify what skills they would personally need to succeed as a leader and as an assistant.

In this case, the participants agreed that agentic traits are the most important for being a successful leader. They viewed more communal traits as valuable for assistant positions.

“Our results underscore that women internalize a stereotypically masculine view of leadership,” Vial said in a statement. “Although women seem to value communality more than men when thinking about other leaders, they may feel that acting in a stereotypically feminine way themselves could place them at a disadvantage compared to male leaders.”

A paper describing the full study is published in the journal Frontiers.

Some hope

Although women make up the majority of the professional workforce, they are still extremely underrepresented in leadership roles.

These findings show the immensely stunting effects of stereotypes.

“Our results suggest that the concentration of men in top decision-making roles such as corporate boards and chief executive offices may be self-sustaining because men in particular tend to devalue more communal styles of leadership — and men are typically the gatekeepers to top organizational positions of prestige and authority,” explained Vial.

However, there is one glimpse of hope.

The study showed that while female participants mostly prefered stereotypically male leadership qualities, they showed more support for communal leadership styles than the male participants did.

“While it may be too soon to tell whether more communal traits will indeed define the leaders of the 21st century, our research suggests women might be more willing to embrace this trend,” Vial said in a statement.