Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, says any preference that women have for male bosses is a sign of the struggles women still have in the workplace.

“A lot of women who do become supervisors are under pressure to prove that they’re not ’soft,”’ Gandy says. Men, meanwhile, are given more opportunities to supervise as they see fit and may be better positioned to give perks like a flexible schedule.

There may also be different emotional expectations from a female boss. When a woman is in charge, workers expect to find someone nurturing and maternal, says Caitlin Friedman, a co-author of “The Girl’s Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch).”

“I did maybe 100 radio interviews (when the book came out) and I can’t tell you how many callers would call in and say they liked their boss and she was like a mother until she started telling me what to do and then I couldn’t stand her,” she says.
The traits that people associate with leadership tend to be stereotypically masculine ones like toughness and decisiveness. Women, on the other hand, are expected to be gentle, kind and deferential.

“Women in cultural stereotypes fit the boss role less well than men,” says Alice Eagly, a professor at Northwestern University who has studied sex differences in leadership.

And when a woman does act tough and decisive? That doesn’t go over well, either.
“They are often regarded more unfavorably than a man who acts in the same way -- because they don’t conform to norms about ’nice’ feminine behavior,” Eagly says.

If the situation is starting to sound grim for women, there’s hope. Eagly points out that attitudes toward women in leadership have improved over time.

“Not many years ago, men were greatly preferred, and now their advantage is much less,” she says. “Increasingly, good bosses are viewed in more androgynous terms, leaving more room for women to be perceived as good bosses.”

Management consultant Tom Peters calls women “the premier untapped leadership talent in the world.” He says women can be better leaders because they understand the importance of relationships and are better at multitasking.

In fact, Eagly has found in her research that women are more likely than men to have effective leadership styles. They tend to be more collaborative, set positive goals, encourage creativity and growth and use rewards to encourage employees.
“This is a ’good teacher/good coach’ model of leadership, and research indicates that such leader behaviors are generally correlated with positive outcomes,” she says.

And what of that feminist dream of women pulling other women up the chain of command?

“I think it actually happened and continues to happen,” says Gandy, the NOW president. “I see example after example of corporations, of law firms, of businesses getting a child care center on site that was prompted by the first female partner or the first female vice president.”

1) Be friendly, but not friends, with your employees. “One of the biggest challenges that women face when they go into leadership positions is that they befriend their employees. If you have a female boss and she’s ’befriended’ you, when it comes to turning around and criticizing you or giving you feedback, you take it personally.”

2) Be clear with people. If you want something on Tuesday, never say, “Do you think you could finish this by Tuesday?” Employees will take this as a request, not an order, and will not understand if you’re upset when it’s not done on Tuesday.

3) Share the big picture. “Women tend to multitask so they won’t delegate the way they should delegate to their staff, and then when they do delegate, they micromanage. ... I think a lot of new managers don’t put themselves in the shoes of their employees. Don’t hide from the employees, tell them what they need to know.”