VJ STEFFEN’s scientific contributions

... Although this unhypothesized result must be interpreted with caution, gender role congruity theory provides a potential explanation for it. Specifically, servant leadership's communal nature implies that women rather than men might serve as its most credible ambassadors and rolemodels, due to our implicit matches of women with communion and men with more agentic pursuits (Eagly & Steffen, 1984). In hindsight, it is clear that theory on gender roles predicts a stronger female advantage for communal behavioral outcomes such as follower servant leadership than agentic outcomes such as performance. ...

Reference:

Servant leadership, leader gender, and team gender role: Testing a female advantage in a cascading model of performance