Masculine Women or Feminine Men?: Evaluating Citizens’ Responses to Leader Gender and Style in China

Politics has traditionally been—and in many ways remains—a male-dominated sphere. Accordingly, prior research has consistently found that citizens tend to prefer not only male leaders but also those who exhibit a masculine leadership style. However, with the growing emphasis on collaborative and emotional governance—which calls for a more traditionally feminine leadership style—do such preferences still persist? To explore this question, we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with 6,324 citizens in China, where the government has actively promoted governance reforms aligned with these more feminine styles. Our findings reveal that preferences differ significantly between male and female respondents. For men, a leader’s gender is paramount: male leaders are consistently preferred, regardless of their leadership style. In contrast, women place greater importance on leadership style, favoring a masculine approach irrespective of the leader’s gender. Notably, when considering both gender and leadership style together, we find that male leaders with a feminine style are the most favored overall, while female leaders with a masculine style are the least preferred. These findings shed light on how hegemonic ideals of leadership—both gendered and stylistic—continue to shape political preferences. They reveal how the male hegemon is preserved not only through a preference for male leaders, but also through the penalization of women who deviate from expected feminine styles, thus reinforcing gendered hierarchies within the evolving landscape of governance in China.