Does Gender Impact How Subordinates View Their Supervisors?

Past research has found that gender impacts how satisfied subordinates are with their leader. Leadership style, sexism, difference score between ideal supervisor and their supervisor, and leader member exchange (LMX) were assessed to understand the relationship between gender and satisfaction with supervisor. It was hypothesized that subordinates would be more critical of women than men because of views on gender roles, and that the gender of the subordinate would further impact how women were scored. The results of this study indicated that gender was not a significant indicator of how satisfied subordinates are with their supervisor. Furthermore, past research has found that women tend to have more transformational traits, while men tend to have more transactional traits; this was not supported by the data. LMX, followed by transformational leadership, followed by transactional traits were found to be the most predictive of satisfaction with subordinate’s supervisor regardless of gender. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research are discussed. Keywords: leader member exchange (LMX), gender roles, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, satisfaction with superviso