Gender Structure and the Effects of Management Citizenship Behavior

We draw on gender structure theory, along with ideas about stereotyping and status characteristics, to develop hypotheses about how the gendered behaviors of male and female managers differentially impact the organizational commitment and mental health of their employees. We predict that the generally positive effects of management citizenship behaviors (Hodson 1999) will be less so in the case of female managers, especially for their male employees. Analyses of the 2002 National Survey of the Changing Workforce provide substantial support for our hypotheses despite the fact that we find no significant differences in the perceived management citizenship behaviors of male and female managers. We discuss the importance of these findings for organizational inequality and their relevance to ongoing discussion of the “stalled revolution” in gender equality.