Female representation on boards is perhaps one of the most studied topics in board-governance research. At the same time, much is unknown about female directors’ task engagement within boards. Drawing from psychological theory on societal gender beliefs, our study tests whether the impact of director gender on supervisory task engagement hinges on status dynamics in two relational interfaces: the director–board interface and the director–CEO interface. According to this perspective, female directors show less task engagement because gender is a diffuse status cue that creates status differentiation within the director–board interface. Multi-source board survey data (n = 61 boards, n = 315 directors) confirms that, within the confines of the boardroom, female directors do, indeed, receive lower-status ratings than male directors. This effect is weaker when boards have a female chair. Furthermore, lower status explains perceived lower task engagement of female directors, but this link critically hinges on the CEO–director interface. The impact of status differences is more pronounced when directors intersect with a relatively dominant CEO. All in all, the results demonstrate that relational interfaces play a key role for female directors’ task engagement in their board duties.

董事会中的女性代表可能是董事会治理研究中研究最多的主题之一。与此同时，关于女性董事在董事会中的任务参与度，还有很多未知数。借鉴社会性别信念的心理学理论，我们的研究测试了董事性别对监督任务参与的影响是否取决于两个关系界面中的状态动态：董事-董事会界面和董事-首席执行官界面。根据这个观点，女性董事表现出较少的任务参与，因为性别是一种分散的状态线索，在董事 - 董事会界面内造成地位差异。多源板调查数据（n = 61 板，n= 315 名董事）证实，在董事会范围内，女性董事的地位确实低于男性董事。当董事会有女性椅子时，这种效果较弱。此外，较低的地位解释了女性董事认为较低的任务参与度，但这种联系主要取决于 CEO-董事的界面。当董事与相对占主导地位的 CEO 相交时，地位差异的影响更为明显。总而言之，结果表明，关系界面在女性董事在董事会职责中的任务参与方面发挥着关键作用。