The backlash effect in japan: how agency and communality influence the evaluation of agentic female leaders

The backlash effect refers to social and economic penalties for counter-stereotypical behavior. American studies have shown that agentic women experience backlash as a penalty. In the present study, we investigated whether there is a backlash against agentic women in Japan. This is the first study to investigate backlash against agentic women in Japan. Studies 1 (N = 118) and 2 (N = 401) used a hiring situation of a university professor in 2021 and 2022, and Study 3 (N = 734) used a corporate promotion situation in 2023. Participants read a randomly assigned management candidate scenario (male or female target and agentic or communal condition) and rated the candidate’s competence, likability, hireability, and gender stereotype indices. We predicted that agentic women would be rated lower than agentic men in terms of likability and hireability. We investigated mediation effects in which dominance mediated between target gender and likability, and likability mediated between target gender and hireability. No backlash effects against agentic women or any mediation effects were observed, suggesting that agentic targets receive negative evaluations irrespective of gender, and dominance and likability do not mediate these evaluations. The results demonstrated that evaluations did not differ between agentic men and women, and they were less likely to be hired than communal targets, indicating that the backlash effect against women may not be observed in Japan. Our findings suggest that the cultural differences in gender stereotypes between Japan and Western countries might affect the evaluation of agentic women.