Globally, women are underrepresented in leadership positions. A potential explanation is that gender discrimination by subordinates reduces the effectiveness of female leadership. Using a lab-in-the-field experiment in Ethiopia, we test whether leader gender affects the way subjects respond to leadership. We find subjects are ten percent less likely to follow the same advice from a female leader than an otherwise identical male leader. Subjects also give lower evaluations to hypothetical female managerial candidates. However, we find that ability information reverses discrimination. When leaders are presented as highly trained and competent, subjects are more likely to follow advice from women than men. This pattern suggests that beliefs about men and women's ability (i.e., statistical discrimination) play an important role in driving this discriminatory behavior. Our results show that gender discrimination affects adherence to leadership, and signals of ability may be an important tool for gender equity policies aimed at increasing female representation.

在全球范围内，担任领导职务的妇女人数不足。一个可能的解释是，下属的性别歧视降低了女性领导的有效性。通过在埃塞俄比亚进行的实地实验室实验，我们测试了领导者性别是否会影响受试者对领导力的反应方式。我们发现，与其他方面相同的男性领导者相比，受试者接受女性领导者相同建议的可能性要低百分之十。受试者对假设的女性管理候选人的评价也较低。但是，我们发现能力信息可以逆转歧视。当领导者被训练有素且能干时，主题就更多了。可能会遵循女性比男性的建议。这种模式表明，关于男女能力的信念（即统计歧视）在推动这种歧视性行为中起着重要作用。我们的结果表明，性别歧视会影响对领导力的坚持，而能力信号可能是旨在提高女性代表性的性别平等政策的重要工具。