It Pays to Be a Man: Rewards for Leaders in a Coordination Game

This paper addresses followers’ assessment of leaders’ effectiveness in a controlled laboratory environment with salient incentives. We employ a simple game setting to examine how leaders are evaluated for the successes and failures of their groups. Followers participate in a five-person, coordination game repeated for two sets of 10 periods. Followers play each set with a different fixed group. After period 10, a leader provides (scripted) guidance on how to play the game to maximize group earnings. The gender of the leader is the only variable factor. At the end of the twentieth period, followers vote to reward (at a cost to themselves) their leader. We find that, even though leaders are all providing the same guidance, followers are more likely to heed the advice of the male leaders, followers are less likely to ascribe group success to female leaders, and followers reward male leaders more generously than female leaders. There is a premium to being male.