Research has found that candidate age and gender can affect assessors’ ratings of candidates' leadership potential. However, the impact of candidate age and gender, and age and gender workplace stereotypes, on self-perceptions of leadership potential needs to be explored further.
We will measure participants’ endorsement of age and gender stereotypes, their perceptions of their own leadership potential, and their own experiences of having opportunities to develop as leaders. As well as recording participants’ age and gender, we will also measure what age they believe makes a worker older or younger, and the extent to which they see themselves as a younger or older worker.
We expect that endorsement of gender/age stereotypes will mediate the relationship between gender/age and self-perceptions of leadership potential.