Do transformational leaders reduce the barriers women face in accessing managerial positions? The moderating role of leaders’ gender

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Abstract Despite recent advancements in promoting women to managerial roles, women face several barriers that diminish their chances of attaining managerial positions. These barriers include obstacles related to work-life balance, biased HR practices, difficulties accessing influential networks, being subjected to excessive scrutiny, and the need to demonstrate their contributions more than men. Additionally, a male-oriented organizational culture further exacerbates these barriers. However, transformational leadership could reduce gender barriers. Moreover, leader-member gender congruity can further alleviate these perceived obstacles. Female supervisors are better positioned to assess female employees’ performance, empathize with their needs, offer invaluable support, and advocate for gender-equitable HR practices. This study delves into the direct impact of transformational leadership and leader-member gender congruity and their interactive effects on the perceived promotion barriers. The sample consists of 579 women from three Spanish financial organizations with different positions at work, ranging from executive managers to bank officers. A path analysis model was tested with Mplus, linking perceived barriers to women’s promotion with transformational leadership. Transformational leadership perceptions diminish women’s perceptions of organizational culture-related barriers hindering women’s promotion. Leader-member gender congruity reduces their perceptions of barriers related to unequal performance appraisal and unfair HR practices. Furthermore, there was an unexpected interaction effect: perceived transformational leadership reduces women employees’ perceptions regarding barriers to managerial positions when they have male supervisors. However, this effect was not observed when supervisors were female. Thus, the impact of women transformational leaders on reducing the barriers to women’s promotion is not dependent on their transformational perceived behaviors. These outcomes highlight the role of perceived transformational leadership in mitigating women’s promotion difficulties and emphasize the relevance of female supervision in reducing women’s perceptions of barriers to management promotion.

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