The cultural construal of leadership as masculine impedes women’s attainment of leader roles. This research examined whether adding feminine demands to a leader role relieved the greater stress experienced by women than men in a job interview for a leadership position and considered the processes that mediated women’s less favourable interview outcomes. In a hiring simulation, management students (N = 209; 112 women, 97 men) interviewed for a leader role framed by either stereotypically feminine or masculine role requirements. As shown by the stress biomarker salivary cortisol, the feminine role framing alleviated women’s, but not men’s, physiological stress response during the interview. However, under both masculine and feminine role framing, women, compared with men, reported lesser fit, expected poorer interview performance, appraised greater threat relative to challenge, and evaluated their performance less favourably, as did external raters. An additional vignette study (N = 305; 189 women, 111 men, 5 diverse) found that the feminine role framing increased the leader role’s communal demands but still conveyed strong agentic demands not different from those of the masculine role. In conclusion, although a feminine role framing alleviated women’s physiological stress response, it did not change their less favourable outcomes, as indicated by participants’ self-reports and others’ reports.

将领导视为男性的文化解释阻碍了女性获得领导角色。这项研究考察了在领导角色中增加女性要求是否能缓解女性在领导职位的求职面试中比男性承受更大的压力，并考虑了中介女性不太有利的面试结果的过程。在招聘模拟中，管理专业的学生（N = 209;112 名女性，97 名男性）面试了由刻板印象中女性或男性角色要求构成的领导者角色。正如压力生物标志物唾液皮质醇所示，在访谈期间，女性角色框架减轻了女性的生理压力反应，但没有减轻男性的生理压力反应。然而，在男性和女性角色框架下，与男性相比，女性报告的适合度较低，预期面试表现较差，相对于挑战评估的威胁更大，并且对她们的表现评价较差，外部评分者也是如此。另一项小插图研究（N = 305;189 名女性，111 名男性，5 名多元化）发现，女性角色框架增加了领导者角色的公共需求，但仍传达了强烈的能动性需求，与男性角色的需求没有什么不同。总之，尽管女性角色框架减轻了女性的生理压力反应，但它并没有改变她们不太有利的结果，正如参与者的自我报告和其他人的报告所表明的那样。