The Broken Rung

Many organizations have sought to increase female representation in leadership throughdemand-side interventions, such as quotas, but often meet limited success. The paper presented in this Mannheim Applied Seminar investigates the role of supply-side factors for limiting female leadership representation. The author collectadministrative data covering the universe of job application and vacancy data within a largemultinational firm and conduct large-scale surveys of the firm’s employees. Women in the firmare 37% less likely to report aspirations to lead a team, which is a key avenue for advancing tohigher-level leadership positions. These gender differences appear early in women’s careers andcannot be accounted for by psychological traits or family constraints. Rather, women perceiveteam leadership as more burdensome in terms of administrative duties and interpersonal conflict. The differences in leadership aspirations translate into significant differences in applications tointernal vacancies, implying that gender differences in the perceived burden of leadership limitthe firm’s ability to fill leadership positions.