Support for Leader's Decisions in Conflict and Negotiation: Women Do Not Benefit From Relevant Expertise While Men Do

In the present research, we examined the role of leaders' domain-specific expertise and gender as affecting individuals' evaluation of proposals related to intergroup conflict. Across three studies, conducted in two different conflict-related contexts (Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the refugee crisis in Europe), we showed that men and women do not equally benefit from domain-specific expertise. Having high (compared to low) domain-specific expertise positively affected participants' attitudes towards the proposal when its author was a man but not when she was a woman. We further demonstrate that specific characteristics of the proposal (i.e., security relevance) and of the participants (i.e., level of sexism) affect reactions to different negotiation proposals. Our findings suggest that even when women acquire relevant knowledge and experience, they do not benefit from them as much as men. One implication of these findings is that training and enhancing women's expertise may not be enough to eliminate gender bias.