Positioning findings in relation to prior gender–leadership research
| Prior literature insights | What our study confirms | What our study extends or qualifies |
|---|---|---|
| Glass cliff: Women are more likely to be appointed to precarious leadership roles during organisational crisis or poor performance, partly because feminine-stereotyped interpersonal qualities are perceived as suited to such contexts (Ryan and Haslam, 2007; Ryan et al., 2011; Ryan et al., 2016; Kavoosi et al., 2024) | Several women participants described intensive relational work, managing morale and emotional climates during the prolonged COVID-19 crisis | Rather than being newly appointed “glass cliff” leaders, women were already in Middle-level roles and became relational anchors by default, designing connection structures under prolonged disruption (e.g. social calendars, structured check-ins). This extends glass-cliff research beyond precarious appointment dynamics to the sustained relational work performed by incumbent leaders during a prolonged crisis |
| Role congruity and gendered expectations: Women are associated with communal, caring leadership and may receive a trust advantage under some conditions when enacting relational behaviours during crisis; men are associated with agentic, task-focused leadership (Eagly and Karau, 2002; Post et al., 2019) | Several women participants narrated leadership through care and connection, while several men participants emphasised enforcement, control and rule clarity | Several men participants also described care-related practices, including welfare checks and de-escalation, but often framed these practices as risk-management or rule-enforcement work. Several women participants integrated care into relational continuity and emotional atmosphere. This refines role congruity theory by showing how similar care responsibilities can be differently experienced and narrated |
| Emotional labour and leadership: Women leaders face stronger expectations to engage in relational and emotional labour, which can support subordinates and organisations while generating substantial, often unrecognised workload and well-being costs for women leaders (Hollweck et al., 2026; Vial and Cowgill, 2022) | Some women participants’ accounts highlight ongoing emotional availability and relational maintenance as a taken-for-granted part of leadership | This study shows that, in an essential, safety-critical sector under prolonged crisis, emotional labour can become both gendered and infrastructural. Several women participants described relational work that substituted for formal support systems, especially where remote work, isolation or operational pressures limited other sources of support |
| Crisis leadership research: It emphasises decisiveness, sensemaking, resilience, risk-taking and crisis preparedness, often through behavioural or short-window perspectives (Ajith et al., 2026; Boin et al., 2013; Hannah et al., 2009; Sheaffer et al., 2011) | Several women and men participants described continuous sensemaking and decision-making under uncertainty, confirming that middle-level leaders play critical roles in crisis response | Our study extends this literature by showing how some leaders acted as operational well-being anchors during crisis, gatekeeping risk, translating rules and designing social connection. The gender comparison reveals different experiential pathways into this work, including relational holding and emotional containment |
| Gender and well-being leadership: research examines gendered leader emotional labour and the personal and organisational resources that support women’s leadership and careers, but few studies compare how women and men experience responsibility for supporting others’ well-being over time (Farivar et al., 2026; Vial and Cowgill, 2022) | The findings confirm that gendered expectations can shape leaders’ emotional labour and resource experiences, while showing that both women and men carried responsibility for supporting others’ well-being during prolonged crisis | This research directly addresses this gap by providing a gender-comparative phenomenology of well-being-related leadership work, showing how some leaders’ own bodies, emotions and identities absorb the prolonged burden of supporting others in an essential, safety-critical sector |
| Prior literature insights | What our study confirms | What our study extends or qualifies |
|---|---|---|
| Several women participants described intensive relational work, managing morale and emotional climates during the prolonged COVID-19 crisis | Rather than being newly appointed “glass cliff” leaders, women were already in Middle-level roles and became relational anchors by default, designing connection structures under prolonged disruption (e.g. social calendars, structured check-ins). This extends glass-cliff research beyond precarious appointment dynamics to the sustained relational work performed by incumbent leaders during a prolonged crisis | |
| Several women participants narrated leadership through care and connection, while several men participants emphasised enforcement, control and rule clarity | Several men participants also described care-related practices, including welfare checks and de-escalation, but often framed these practices as risk-management or rule-enforcement work. Several women participants integrated care into relational continuity and emotional atmosphere. This refines role congruity theory by showing how similar care responsibilities can be differently experienced and narrated | |
| Some women participants’ accounts highlight ongoing emotional availability and relational maintenance as a taken-for-granted part of leadership | This study shows that, in an essential, safety-critical sector under prolonged crisis, emotional labour can become both gendered and infrastructural. Several women participants described relational work that substituted for formal support systems, especially where remote work, isolation or operational pressures limited other sources of support | |
| Several women and men participants described continuous sensemaking and decision-making under uncertainty, confirming that middle-level leaders play critical roles in crisis response | Our study extends this literature by showing how some leaders acted as operational well-being anchors during crisis, gatekeeping risk, translating rules and designing social connection. The gender comparison reveals different experiential pathways into this work, including relational holding and emotional containment | |
| The findings confirm that gendered expectations can shape leaders’ emotional labour and resource experiences, while showing that both women and men carried responsibility for supporting others’ well-being during prolonged crisis | This research directly addresses this gap by providing a gender-comparative phenomenology of well-being-related leadership work, showing how some leaders’ own bodies, emotions and identities absorb the prolonged burden of supporting others in an essential, safety-critical sector |
The comparative statements refer to contextually situated tendencies within the 15-case IPA subsample and do not indicate fixed or causal gender differences
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