Empowering Women Managers: Breaking Barriers in Career Development

By / Li Fuli, Qiao Yan, Liu Jiaxin, Wang Haizhen

The role congruity theory suggests that over the course of social development, people gradually form and solidify their perceptions of certain social roles, which further evolve into customary social norms, creating stereotypes. Among these, gender stereotypes involve different perceptions of the roles played by men and women. The main content includes: men are perceived as more agentic, exhibiting traits such as proactivity, decisiveness, ambition, leadership, confidence, strength, independence, boldness, and competitiveness; in the workplace, this agentic behavior manifests as self-assured speech, assertiveness, proactivity, willingness to speak up, and taking on a guiding role. In contrast, women are perceived as more communal, caring for others’ welfare and exhibiting traits such as kindness, helpfulness, compassion, sensitivity in interpersonal relationships, refinement, and gentleness; in the workplace, this often manifests as polite communication, modest actions, and a tendency to take on supportive, comforting, and subordinate roles.

As a result, stereotypes about managers are often associated with men, while female traits seem incompatible with the managerial role, leading to the implicit bias that “when thinking of a manager, one thinks of a man.” This incongruence between female roles and managerial roles becomes a significant obstacle to women’s career development, manifesting at various stages of their professional journeys. During promotions, it takes the form of gender bias that hinders women’s advancement; after women successfully advance, it appears as double standards that obstruct female managers from showcasing their talents; when women seek to break through and take proactive actions, it morphs into evaluation traps, causing female managers to work twice as hard for half the results. The following sections will delve into the various dilemmas caused by role incongruence in the professional development of female managers.

Stereotypes depict managers as highly agentic, consistent with stereotypes about men. Thus, people are more likely to associate managers with men. Stereotypes of women as communal imply they lack agentic qualities, leading to the perception that they are unfit for managerial roles. Consequently, women have long been at a disadvantage in the selection and appointment of managers. Gender stereotypes not only rigidly describe female traits but also dictate how women should behave. This stereotype regarding behavioral norms serves as another barrier to women’s career development. Women are perceived as needing to shoulder more family responsibilities, and managers who hold this view may believe that women cannot cope with the dual demands of family and work, making them unsuitable for managerial positions. Some managers think that women have limited managerial capabilities, cannot manage large teams, or are not committed to their careers, rendering them unsuitable candidates for management roles.

Research has found that due to the long-standing existence of these gender biases, women often need to possess stronger qualifications than their male counterparts to counteract negative perceptions regarding their career commitment and abilities. This explains why women take longer and exert more effort than men to achieve promotions. Such factors contribute to and perpetuate the low representation of women in management positions and the long-standing inequities they face in the labor market.

In an effort to break the negative impacts of gender stereotypes on their career development, many female managers attempt to exhibit more agentic traits to align with societal expectations of managers, yet the label of “strong woman” often follows. However, the “strong woman” label contradicts society’s expectation that women should be communal, leading to the perception that “strong women” lack the good qualities women are expected to possess, such as gentleness and kindness. When women exhibit ambition, competitive spirit, and confidence similar to men, they may be labeled as cunning, cold, and greedy. As a result, “strong woman” managers often struggle to gain the support and affection of subordinates or superiors. Female managers find themselves in a dilemma: being somewhat assertive may meet expectations for managers but violate expectations for women, leading to deteriorated interpersonal relationships; conversely, if they are less assertive, they may be deemed unfit for managerial positions, falling into the trap of low ability bias.

The double standards used to evaluate female managers are inherently unreasonable, and applying such unreasonable standards places female managers in a dilemma, inevitably damaging their willingness and ability to act. Research shows that compared to men, female managers are more likely to worry about the negative outcomes of exhibiting agentic behavior. They may unconsciously experience more guilt, fear, anxiety, and other negative emotions. Under long-term pressure, factors such as gender expectations, self-evaluation, leadership motivation, self-efficacy, and sense of belonging among female managers may be harmed or diminished. Women may even lower their expectations and no longer aspire to achieve higher social status or occupy positions of power like men, believing they lack the capabilities required for such roles. To avoid conflict, women gradually suppress their career ambitions, actively relinquishing the idea of striving for advancement and reducing their willingness to take on delegated responsibilities. Thus, it is evident that this dilemma leads to a gradual decrease in the proactive willingness of women and female managers to take action.

The role congruity trap not only creates an imbalance in the gender ratio in managerial positions and the dilemmas faced by women in management roles but also has a substantial negative impact on the evaluation of the outcomes of women’s corresponding actions.

The same managerial actions performed by female managers often attract harsher evaluations than those performed by male managers. For instance, if a female manager promotes a female subordinate, regardless of whether it is for personal or altruistic reasons, her abilities may be questioned, and negative performance evaluations may follow; the promoted female subordinate may also be suspected of having been elevated due to her capabilities or her relationship with the female leader. However, male managers do not face such negative consequences for similar actions. Similar studies have found that even when female managers take a stand against unethical behavior in organizations, they may face criticism. People may view this behavior as a violation of female role norms, a lack of self-control, or selfishly imposing their moral views on others, leading to increased dissatisfaction and even retaliation against female managers.

In the entrepreneurial field, companies founded by female entrepreneurs also struggle to receive positive evaluations and feedback in the capital market. Research indicates that many investors do not see women as fitting their stereotypes of entrepreneurs or business leaders, resulting in poorer assessments of the feasibility and growth potential of businesses led by female entrepreneurs. This leads to female entrepreneurs facing “discount penalties” when seeking funding, as they are less likely to obtain financing and receive lower amounts of funding.

In summary, female managers face greater challenges and difficulties in the workplace compared to male managers. However, there are also outstanding female managers around us, such as the inspiring leader of the global technology industry, Meng Wanzhou, Vice Chairman and Rotating Chairman of Huawei, and Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Facebook, who has been hailed as “the most influential woman in Silicon Valley” by American media. Despite facing intertwined shackles and various workplace dilemmas, female managers still have opportunities to leverage their subjective initiative and self-advantages to break through existing challenges and actively promote their career development. So, what actions should a female manager take to break through? The following sections will propose three key steps based on a process perspective to help female managers overcome dilemmas, stand out, and reshape themselves.

First, women or female managers should avoid “self-limiting beliefs” and recognize that women can embody both agentic and communal traits; their female identity does not conflict with their managerial identity. When long-term exposure to a stereotypical social environment occurs, women may develop gender stereotypes and biased perceptions about themselves, leading even female managers to believe that their female identity and leadership identity are at odds. They may fear that their female identity limits their ability to become effective leaders, question, “As a woman, am I capable of being an effective manager?” and worry that their leadership identity may interfere with their female identity, fearing, “As a manager, am I still feminine enough?”

Women should break this established mindset and reshape their perceptions, realizing that female identity and managerial identity are highly integrated. Female managers need to acknowledge that agentic and communal traits are not inherently incompatible as traditional stereotypes suggest but rather complementary and mutually enhancing. Only when women fully recognize the legitimacy of their female identity in holding managerial positions can they fundamentally alleviate the pressures arising from identity conflicts, confront their leadership motivations and capabilities, and experience greater satisfaction in both life and work. Although women may still be limited by external stereotypes and role perceptions in the short term, once they realize that agentic and communal traits can harmoniously coexist, female managers will be able to integrate these two attributes more skillfully, achieving higher psychological resilience and leadership effectiveness.

In addition to changing their thinking habits, female managers should proactively understand and recognize the unique managerial advantages they possess. The communal traits of women highlight their concern for others’ welfare, willingness to help, kindness, and compassion, which contribute to a leadership style and unique abilities that serve as the “soft power” of female managers in the workplace. Research has found that the presence of female managers helps shape a friendly employer image for organizations, indicating that the organization values employee interests, is willing to assume social responsibilities, and is conducive to enhancing employee job satisfaction. Furthermore, the strong communication and persuasion skills, attention to detail, and other soft traits of female managers naturally help improve relationships between organizations and investors, external groups, governments, and customers. Additionally, the inclusion of female managers fosters team diversity, helping to establish a relaxed and harmonious team atmosphere, thereby enhancing team creativity and performance. The inclusive and democratic nature of female managers enables them to embrace diverse viewpoints, providing varied heterogeneous information that promotes team communication efficiency. Compared to male managers, female managers may even possess a higher premium effect, as there are few same-gender competitors in equivalent executive positions; under the pressure of gender diversity policies implemented in certain countries or regions, the speed of women advancing to executive positions may actually exceed that of men.

Thus, while gender differences pose obstacles to women’s career development, female managers are not always an “advantaged group”; methods and behavioral strategies that allow them to showcase their unique advantages in the workplace can help them better exercise their leadership and overcome barriers in career development.

Although role congruity theory suggests that women must exhibit communal traits to conform to societal role expectations, the expectation violation theory indicates that positive behaviors that contradict stereotypes can also bring unique advantages to women. Female managers can leverage this positive expectation violation effect to demonstrate corresponding agentic traits, gaining an advantage in leadership evaluations and displays.

Gender stereotypes include prohibitive and prescriptive traits. Prohibitive male traits include stubbornness, control, manipulation, and other negative attributes; prescriptive male traits include decisiveness, independence, and other positive attributes. Research has shown that exhibiting behaviors that violate gender traits does not necessarily lead to negative outcomes; only exhibiting prohibitive behaviors tends to incur negative consequences. Therefore, when women demonstrate prescriptive rather than prohibitive male traits—i.e., positive male traits—although they exceed the traditional female gender role perceptions, they can yield unique positive effects, thereby helping women gain advantages in leadership evaluations. For example, when women engage in more task-promoting behaviors within their teams, helping to advance task progress and proactively seeking resources for the team, these actions can help others recognize women’s managerial potential, increasing their chances of being selected for both informal and formal leadership roles.

Moreover, when female managers exhibit prescriptive traits, it creates a positive expectation violation, helping them transition from a “dilemma” to a “win-win” situation. The female identity brings positive stereotypes of high communal traits; exhibiting male prescriptive traits will surprise others, leading to more favorable evaluations. In this way, positive male traits can smoothly integrate into the identity of female managers, achieving a “win-win” effect.

Due to long-standing social biases and cognitive inertia, the proactive behaviors of female managers may still be perceived and understood negatively. Therefore, in addition to taking proactive actions, women also need to reconstruct the rationale of their proactive behaviors, achieving task goals while avoiding criticism from others. Specifically, women can frame their proactive behaviors within a communal framework, emphasizing the potential benefits of these actions for others and the organization in order to change their own and others’ misaligned perceptions and biased evaluations of female proactive behaviors (such as task delegation, moral opposition, entrepreneurship, etc.), thereby reducing feelings of gender violation and the potential negative impacts that may arise.

For example, managers often need to assign tasks and responsibilities to subordinates and grant them the authority to execute designated tasks; this action is often perceived as highly agentic and inconsistent with female roles. Therefore, female managers may be more sensitive to their own delegating behaviors and may associate them with more negative emotions, impacting their inclination to delegate tasks and the ultimate execution of those tasks. In light of this, female managers should learn to frame task delegation as highly communal, emphasizing how these actions benefit their subordinates, teams, organizations, and external stakeholders. By reshaping the nature of tasks, female managers can cleverly transform behaviors that seem to conflict with their gender roles into behaviors that align with gender roles, significantly alleviating the dissonance felt by themselves and others regarding the implementation of these behaviors, enhancing the likelihood of task delegation and the quality of interaction with subordinates and teams, ultimately helping them fully leverage the benefits of delegation.

Another example is when managers need to curb, regulate, and constrain the non-compliant or unethical behaviors of subordinates or others. Such actions are seen as highly agentic and may expose female managers to higher risks of retaliation due to their impact on others’ interests. Therefore, when implementing such moral defense actions, female managers can utilize the communal framework (emphasizing the benefits of such actions for the organization) to highlight the public nature and legitimacy of these actions to the organization, leaders, and subordinates. This reframing can reduce others’ perceptions of female managers’ actions as violating gender expectations, enhance others’ recognition of female leaders’ self-control abilities, and mitigate potential retaliatory actions.

Similarly, female entrepreneurs can emphasize the positive significance of entrepreneurship for enhancing social welfare when engaging in entrepreneurial activities, which can mitigate the disadvantages associated with their female identity. This social framework aligns with investors’ stereotypes of female entrepreneurs’ communal traits, reducing the perceived inconsistency between women and the roles of entrepreneurs, thereby enhancing their perceptions of the feasibility of entrepreneurial projects led by female entrepreneurs.

Thus, female managers must not only take proactive actions but also adeptly leverage the communal frameworks of organizations and others to reduce perceived dissonance and potential negative evaluations, skillfully garnering support and trust from others, thereby reversing their unfavorable position of working twice as hard for half the results and achieving a positive effect of working half as hard for twice the results.

Gender should not be a limitation but a source of strength. In contemporary society, where female managers still face numerous career development challenges, we call on female managers to actively change their self-limiting perceptions, recognize their unique potential advantages, take proactive actions to break long-standing stereotypes, and utilize communal frameworks to reshape the purposes and outcomes of their actions. Ultimately, through the power of “she,” they can break through numerous obstacles and achieve a brilliant bloom like a rose.

Of course, in addition to the efforts of female managers as key action agents, breakthroughs in the career development of female managers also urgently require comprehensive support from enterprises and the entire social system. We actively advocate for and call on enterprises to continuously optimize organizational systems, striving to become the most female-friendly employers, providing female employees and managers with fair and equal opportunities for promotion, salary levels, management authority, and objective performance evaluations, while also working hard to provide resource support for female managers and reduce barriers to career development.

This article is dedicated to those who strive for gender equality. We firmly believe that “you, who walk alongside us,” will surely promote the sustainable and healthy development of enterprises.

About the Authors | Li Fuli: Professor of Organizational Management at the School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University; Qiao Yan: PhD student in Organizational Management at the School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University; Liu Jiaxin: PhD student in Management, Marketing, and Information Systems at Hong Kong Baptist University; Wang Haizhen: Associate Professor at the School of Business, Xi’an International Studies University.