I am not sure I totally buy this, but I'll let you decide. According to a post in the Harvard Business Review blog, the "likability penalty" that women supposedly face as they ascend the corporate ladder is no longer a factor.

So here's the news flash: You can be a boss lady and not be automatically cast as a bitch. Awesome.

Using responses from 9,500 male and 5,000 female leaders, consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman developed a "liability index." Their conclusion:

While, certainly, some individual women may find themselves disliked as they move up the organization, our aggregate data show the opposite is more common—that male leaders are perceived more negatively as they rise, whereas women generally maintain their popularity throughout their entire careers.

Did you hear that? Not only are female leaders no longer disdained, but they are more popular than their male counterparts! I know, I know, you're going to tell me that proves that women make better bosses. But don't get too carried away. As the authors note, women exceeded men on the likability index by a mere 3 percent.

Ultimately, what counts for both female and male bosses, contend the authors, is how their business performance measures up:

If you plot overall perceived leadership effectiveness against likability, you discover that the greater the perceived effectiveness of leaders—male or female—the higher their score on the likability index. Coupling this with our past studies, which show a high correlation between perceived leadership effectiveness and such critical measures of business outcomes as profitability, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and productivity, convinces us that people like effective leaders who produce superior results, no matter what their gender.

Of course, it makes perfect sense that what counts is business outcome—essentially, whether the business made or lost money under the leader's watch. Indeed, what else could it be?

Still, that doesn't address whether male and female leaders are judged differently during the course of their jobs.

Take Marissa Mayer. I have no doubt that she will be hailed as a terrific leader if she turns Yahoo! Inc. into a Silicon Valley darling. But until she gets Yahoo to a better place, she will continue to be picked apart for her leadership style. She's been getting a lot of heat for her decision to abolish off-site working arrangements. While I totally disagree with her position, I also think she got more flak for it than a male CEO would have under similar circumstances. And let's not forget all the grief Mayer got for her decision to return to work only weeks after giving birth to her first child.

Yes, I think female leaders are held under closer scrutiny. Maybe it's because we expect them to be more humanistic. Maybe it's because they are still so novel that we look closely at every move they make. Whatever.

That said, we all know that nothing succeeds like success—no matter the sex of the leader. Until they reach the finish line, though, women better have a tough stomach.

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