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Stereotypes are defined as “beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors of members of certain groups” (Hilton & von Hippel, 1996, p. 240). Stereotyping is a ubiquitous human phenomenon (Fiske, 1998), partly because stereotypes are so easy to use. When people are identifiable as members of a larger group, stereotyping makes it convenient for others to remember and categorize them. Stereotypes may be accurate or inaccurate, and positive or negative, in their depiction of the average group member. However, a stereotype of members of a particular group (e.g., women, men, leaders) is unlikely to characterize all group members accurately.

Stereotyping is a cognitive activity, related to learning (or imagining) and remembering distinctions between various groups of people. People who display prejudice, or a negative attitude toward members of other groups, are engaging in an emotional activity. Discrimination, a behavioral activity, is exhibited in how people treat and make decisions about members of other groups (Fiske, 1998). We have reason to be concerned about all three of these phenomena in the workplace. All of us may be targets of these phenomena, as well as engage in these phenomena. Further, negative stereotyping of members of a group may lead to prejudice and discrimination directed towards them. In this chapter, we focus on stereotyping on the basis of both gender and the leader role.

As noted in Chapter 1, gender stereotypes represent beliefs about the psychological traits that are characteristic of females vis-à-vis males. They are typically characterized by two independent dimensions, masculinity and femininity (Bem, 1974). According to gender stereotypes, males are high in “masculine” traits (also known as agentic traits) such as independence, aggressiveness, and dominance; in contrast, females are high in “feminine” traits (also known as communal traits) such as gentleness, sensitivity to the feelings of others, and tactfulness (Ellemers, 2018; Kite et al., 2008). Gender stereotypes may affect workplace outcomes by serving as the basis for differential treatment of and decisions about women vis-à-vis men solely because of their group membership (i.e., discrimination on the basis of gender) (Heilman, 2012; Koch et al., 2015; Perry et al., 1994).

The masculinity and femininity dimensions of gender stereotypes may be further divided into independent constructs; that is, there may be multiple masculinities and multiple femininities (Broadbridge & Simpson, 2011; Lewis, 2014). For example, masculinity may be subdivided into a personal dimension that focuses on independence and a social dimension that focuses on aggressiveness and dominance (Choi et al., 2009); further, there may be many variations of “hegemonic masculinity,” or patterns of practices that go beyond stereotypes to maintain men's dominance over women (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). However, the terms masculinity and femininity refer to meaningful concepts for people and are an important part of their gender schemas (Bem, 1993). Thus, although the concepts themselves may be broken down further, I will refer to masculinity and femininity as global constructs in the book.

Gender stereotypes evoke strong reactions. For example, after the American Psychological Association (2018) issued its first-ever guidelines on counseling boys and men, some praised the guidelines as “reimagining boys in the 21st century” (Way, 2019, p. 926) while others criticized the guidelines as defining masculinity as an illness (Komisar, 2019). A poll of British young men found that although most had a negative view of masculinity, they felt pressured to “man up” by conforming to the male gender stereotype (Petter, 2018). Still others have argued that masculinity receives too much attention and the importance of “doing femininity” needs to be recognized (Fondas, 1997; Lewis, 2014).

Leader stereotypes represent beliefs about the traits that are characteristic of leaders or managers. In the leadership literature, leader stereotypes are often referred to as individuals’ implicit leadership theories (Junker & van Dick, 2014), or beliefs about leadership in general. They evoke less strong reactions than gender stereotypes. However, they may also significantly affect workplace outcomes, in that candidates for selection or promotion who are stereotyped, whether accurately or not, as deficient in the traits needed for a specific leader position will be unlikely to attain the position.

If both gender and leader stereotypes have these kinds of effects, the linkage between the two types of stereotypes is likely to have significant effects as well. Hence, this chapter.