Assessing Villagers’ Preferences of Gender-Stereotypic Leaders in Village Development Programs: The Case of Rural Sri Lanka

This study examines how villagers evaluate leadership candidates in community-based programs by distinguishing between category-based evaluation (preferences based on a candidate’s gender) and attribute-based evaluation (preferences based on gender-associated leadership characteristics). Although recent studies suggest that leadership qualities commonly associated with femininity are increasingly viewed positively, women remain underrepresented in leadership roles in many rural communities. This discrepancy raises the question of whether gender itself or gender-associated leadership characteristics play a stronger role in leader selection. To investigate this issue, we conducted a choice-based conjoint experiment with 1,147 villagers in rural Sri Lanka, in which respondents evaluated hypothetical candidates for the chairperson position of Village Development Programs. Candidate profiles randomly varied across five dimensions: gender, leadership trait (agentic or communal), leadership style (autocratic or democratic), policy priority area (finance, infrastructure, education, or healthcare), and gender ideology (conservative or liberal). The results reveal an important pattern in villagers’ leadership evaluations. Although respondents prefer candidates with democratic leadership styles and liberal gender ideologies, they consistently favor male candidates over female candidates. In contrast, leadership traits and policy priorities do not significantly influence candidate choice. These findings indicate that category-based gender bias persists even when leadership attributes associated with femininity are valued.