(Managerial) style over substance : determinants of devaluation for female supervisors in an Indian garment factory

Abstract

Despite the rising representation of women in management, female managers continue to be devalued compared to male managers, presenting a challenge for gender inequality in organizations. This study helps address a significant gap in the literature by investigating if the devaluation of female managers can be explained by their lower effectiveness in motivating worker performance. We investigate this question by using a methodological framework that combines unique personnel records, ethnographic and field-experimental data in the context of a large Indian garment factory where female supervisors are devalued and paid 15% less than their male counterparts to manage a female workforce. First, we demonstrate that the devaluation of female supervisors cannot be explained by their lower managerial effectiveness. By exploiting within-worker changes in supervisor gender in the personnel data, we find that female supervisors elicit 5% higher worker performance than male supervisors. Second, we ethnographically and experimentally show that female supervisors outperform their male counterparts by adopting a "non-authoritative managerial style," and further suggest that this style could lead to devaluation by upper management. Combined, these results rule out managerial substance as an explanation for the devaluation of female managers, pointing instead to managerial style as a prime determinant of gender inequality in the workplace.