With respect to the overall impact of gender on leader effectiveness,
the literature to date seems to oversimplify gender advantages
in leadership. Our examination of potential moderators of
this relationship suggests that it may not be so simple. Rather, our
findings indicate a number of factors that moderate this relationship.
One of our key findings is that very different patterns of
results occur depending on whether self- or other-ratings serve as
the measure of leader effectiveness. Moreover, results are further
moderated by a number of other contextual variables. These results
(quantitatively presented in Table 1) are summarized in Table 2.
Below, we briefly discuss these findings with respect to implications
for RCT, consistency with the Eagly et al. (1995) metaanalysis,
and implications for gender-focused research and practice.