Strength in Numbers? How Gender Ratio Shapes Leadership and Influence
Women are entering the workforce in greater numbers than ever before. Yet despite this progress, women remain significantly underrepresented in senior leadership roles. As many countries implement 30% board quotas, one question becomes central: does altering gender ratio also transform who is influential?
Research on this topic has produced inconsistent results. Simply adding more women to a team does not automatically ensure that women and men will have equal opportunities to shape decisions or rise to leadership positions. Our project aims to understand why, by zooming in on the dynamic process of leadership claiming (e.g., taking the lead) and granting (e.g., supporting someone’s lead).
“Gender differences in leadership claiming and granting can produce outcomes most people do not expect, such as women benefiting from being in the minority”
Our collaborative research with the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam finds that men claim leadership more often, while women grant more (Van Niekerken et al., 2025). So, in groups with more men these claims frequently collide, reducing men’s overall influence and creating opportunities for women to assert leadership. As the number of women increases, total claims by women rise, but each woman claims less often because only one person can claim at a time (Zhou et al., 2025). Thus, there is not always strength in numbers.
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Van Niekerken, S., Andrews, W. G., Bieselt, H. E., Zhou, X., Oedzes, J., Hemelrijk, C. K., Homan, A. C., Nijstad, B. A., & van Vugt, M. (2025). Lead or follow: How micro-behaviors shape leader-follower identities for women and men. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Zhou, X., Giardini, F., Hemelrijk, C. K., Bieselt, H., van Niekerken, S., Oedzes, J., Andrews, W. G., Homan, A. C., van Vugt, M., & Nijstad, B. A. (2025). Gender ratio and influence in teams: An agent-based model on leader emergence. Manuscript submitted for publication.
This research is funded by the Dutch Research Council.