Female Top Representation as an Employer Brand: Effects on Prospective Employees

Despite growing efforts to increase female representation at the highest levels in decision making, effects of proportion of women in such distal levels of management on employees´ responses are unclear. The current paper proposes a moderated mediation model examining the psychological paths through which female representation at the top affects male and female prospective employees´ work expectations and tests it with an experimental paradigm. In two studies, participants envisioned organizations with different proportions of women at the highest managerial levels. Participants held more positive images about potential employer organizations with greater proportions of female managers. Effects were stronger for women. Attributions of communion also engendered positive work expectations. Mediation analyses suggested that women´s higher attribution of communal features to organizations with greater proportions of women on the top, as well as the slightly greater effects of communion for women compared to men, help explain the effects. Implications for the employee branding process in a digitalized world where it is necessary to overcome the outdated picture of a male-dominated and agentic context are discussed.