Closing the Gap, Carrying the Burden: How Gender and Prosocial Motivation Shape Workplace Recognition

ABSTRACT Despite progress toward gender equity, women remain disadvantaged in gaining workplace recognition. We theorize that prosocial motivation helps women achieve parity in workplace recognition by providing a role‐congruent path to becoming valued advice sources. Drawing on social role theory and role congruity theory, we propose that women are less likely than men to occupy central positions in advice networks, but that high prosocial motivation closes this gap. Advice centrality, in turn, functions as a peer‐conferred signal of workplace recognition that supports leadership emergence and performance ratings. Across a time‐lagged, multi‐source field study and two online experiments, we find support for this model. Study 1 ( n = 275) shows that women occupy less central positions in advice networks than men, but that high prosocial motivation closes this gap. Advice network centrality further mediates the interactive effects of gender and prosocial motivation on leadership emergence and performance ratings. Two online experiments (Study 2a, n = 247; Study 2b, n = 248) provide converging causal evidence for these effects. These findings show that prosocial motivation helps women achieve parity with men in workplace recognition, while raising the possibility that such parity may rest on demands that fall asymmetrically on women.