In this experimental study, the author examined gender-biased reactions to leader failure. The investigation explored how leader gender promotes biased attributional rationalization of the leader's performance failure, negatively affecting evaluations of women. It was predicted that causal attributions generated to explain a leader's failure are particularly unfavorable for failed female leaders, resulting in more severe consequences for women (i.e., more negative performance judgments, social judgments, and personnel decision recommendations), particularly in situations that accentuate the incongruence between the female gender role and leadership role (i.e., with male evaluators and in male gender-typed work contexts). Contrary to predictions, female leaders were not devalued relative to their male counterparts--the female leader's failure was not evaluated more negatively or ascribed more unfavorable causal attributions than the male leader's failure. Rather, results indicated that failure occurring in traditionally female-dominated work contexts has particularly detrimental consequences for male leaders, eliciting more negative performance evaluations and more punitive personnel decision recommendations. Together, findings suggest that leader gender does not diminish the favorability of women's evaluative judgments following a performance failure, instead suggesting the possible existence of a qualified male leader disadvantage. Implications of these results are discussed.
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