Should “sisters” be doing it by themselves? Leadership, allyship, and mobilization for gender equality

Abstract While gender equality initiatives have historically been spearheaded by women, male allies' contribution is increasingly recognized—and challenged. Our article examines the pivotal yet neglected intersection of women's leadership and allyship for gender equality. Across two experiments with community samples (total N = 801), we investigate how message framing (common cause vs. women's issue; Experiment 1), intergroup/male versus intragroup/female allies (Experiments 1–2), and transformative versus tokenistic allyship (Experiment 2) affect female leaders' capacity to mobilize both men and women for gender equality. We demonstrate that common cause (vs. women's issue) messages more readily mobilize men for collective action, whereas women's mobilization remains high irrespective of message framing. We also show that a female leader supported by an intergroup/male rather than an intragroup/female ally is more likely to be seen as “one of us,” have greater influence, and be more effective at mobilizing both men and women for collective action (Experiments 1–2). Critically, men are mobilized by transformative allyship (regardless of ally gender) and disengage from both the leader and the cause in response to tokenistic allyship (Experiment 2). While male allies can be important, our results suggest that transformative allyship is essential for mobilization across gender boundaries.