Abstract
The purpose of this developmental paper is to review the principal findings of Powell and Butterfield’s five-decade research program on the relationship between gender stereotypes and leader prototypes in both an organizational context and a political context. In separate streams of research, they have asked US business students to describe either a “Good Manager” or an “Ideal President” using the Bem Sex-Role Inventory. Overall, Powell and Butterfield have found that a societal norm of masculine leadership has been endorsed over most of the five-decade period; a trend has emerged towards endorsement of a norm of androgynous leadership; and the sharp political divide in the US has been associated with recent group differences in leader prototypes according to respondents’ gender and preferred president. This paper is unique in its dual focus on findings from both research streams and its inclusion of unpublished data tying together the two streams.