Career progression opportunities providing females with the ability to access and occupy powerful positions have steadily increased, as female employees and managers have accumulated requisite working skills and experience (Abendroth et al. 2017). Females increasingly take part in supervisory roles with increasingly improved educational attainment and objective achievements. In female managers’ working relationships with supervisors in particular, females may undertake changes from traditional concepts of the supervisor–subordinate relationship, as their supervisors over the past decades have mostly been males. Interpersonal interactions between female supervisors and their female managers elicit different reactions from those involving male supervisors, because the category of gender seems to be a salient factor leading to differences in shaping and developing attributes and behaviors between females and males (Heilman and Parks‐Stamm 2007). Gender roles, which are closely associated with how working individuals perceive themselves and others, may account for the evaluations and responses that supervisors and managers elicit toward each other (Sheppard and Aquino 2017). For female supervisors and managers, the shared gender identification between them defines characteristics of independent working relationships, which appear to be distinguishable from male colleagues: demographic similarity can lead to social comparison between each other or motivate them to foster gender identification (Heilman and Parks‐Stamm 2007; Hoobler, Wayne and Lemmon 2009). Two contradictory perspectives – competition vs co‐operation – can explain same‐gender working interdependence in female supervisor–manager relations. (As this paper focuses on the supervision of female managers, the term ‘supervisor’ refers to higher level managers.)

The view that women are depicted as jealous and unsupportive of the career progress of other females has been widely disseminated in mainstream media (Sheppard and Aquino 2017). The competitive natures of women's work relationships shape and intensify the intentions of female supervisors to thwart the careers of female managers (Lee, Kesebir and Pillutla 2016). Many studies have found evidence of the ‘queen bee syndrome’, which refers to senior female leaders ignoring and even obstructing the career advancement of female managers (Lee, Kesebir and Pillutla 2016). Female supervisors also must confront invisible barriers – generally termed the ‘glass ceiling’ – to career advancement. Female supervisors are likely to disentangle themselves from gender identification in order to circumvent the career penalties incurred by gender membership. Moreover, the presence of hidden quotas for C‐suite females forces female supervisors and female managers to engage in competitive interdependent relationships (Dezso, Ross and Uribe 2016). Because female supervisors may read signals of competence from female subordinates as threatening, they may react negatively to strongly competent female managers (Inesi and Cable 2015).

By contrast, gender similarity fosters in‐group identification, which defines and shapes the relationship characteristics between female managers and their female supervisors. Female supervisors are willing to support the career advancement of female managers that they perceive as belonging to the same gender category. Lee, Kesebir and Pillutla (2016) reported that female workers strongly reject competitive relationships with same‐gender co‐workers, because relational norms for female workers involve collaborative interdependence. In a similar vein, Vial, Brescoll and Napier (2018) found evidence of in‐group favoritism between female supervisors and female managers indicating that female supervisors are more likely to make favorable assessments of female managers than their male counterparts.

Existing studies have produced mixed findings regarding whether workplace relationships between female supervisors and female managers produce negative consequences or facilitate career success (Lee, Kesebir and Pillutla 2016). Testing female managers’ managerial qualifications makes the contribution of filling gaps in the relationships between supervisor gender and their promotability.

First, female managers’ qualifications are hypothesized to impact their career outcomes, as they can either be seen as competitive threats or positive signals about gender identity (Inesi and Cable 2015). We defined female managers with qualifications as those receiving mentorship and those positioned in higher ranking jobs. Mentoring provides guidance regarding the behaviors that are appropriate for female managers in organizational contexts. Since females have limited opportunities for promotion to higher managerial levels, females in the higher ranks are seen as having the abilities and skills necessary to reach the upper echelons (Leslie, Manchester and Dahm 2017). Female managers who possess and demonstrate managerial qualifications are more likely to achieve highly and positively contribute to organizational outcomes. These female managers may believe that they deserve positive evaluations from female supervisors. However, in contrast to these beliefs, research has validated the counterintuitive prediction that female supervisors tend to penalize female managers with managerial qualifications, by triggering the comparison process between in‐group and out‐group members (Sheppard and Aquino 2017). Testing mentoring participation and job rank as proxies for managerial qualifications is a means of delineating the mechanisms through which female supervisors come to block or facilitate the career advancement of female managers.

Second, this study used a sample of Korean female managers in order to determine the importance of supervisor gender in determining the promotability of female managers with competences and qualifications. The proportion of female workers in managerial and professional occupations has increased rapidly in Korea (Kim et al. 2010). However, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project reported that Korea has the lowest scores for gender egalitarianism (House et al. 2004). Female managers in Korea encounter conflicts stemming from traditional notions of gender roles that diminish their opportunities for upward mobility in the workplace (Kim et al. 2010). As Asian females have steadily advanced into management positions, normative gender expectations in Asian societies have increasingly led to questions about whether women can effectively perform managerial roles (Kim et al. 2010, 2013). This study suggests that Asian companies should consider how supervisor gender relates to managerial qualifications in thwarting or facilitating the career prospects of female managers. We tested our hypotheses using a 2008–2014 dataset from the Korean Women Manager Panel (KWMP) collected by the Korea Women Development Institute (KWDI), a governmental research institution focused on enacting and institutionalizing governmental policies and legislation to endorse gender equality in workplaces. KWMP allows us to conduct longitudinal analysis that contains changes in job ranks of female managers over 7 years in four waves from 2008 to 2014, biannually. Using the KWMP dataset, this study can analyze how the interactions of supervisor gender with job ranks and mentoring participations determine the career tracks of female employers over years.

Using the KWMP dataset, the current study can dig more deeply into the concept of competitive vs co‐operative interdependence so as to provide further scholarly insight into how supervisors evaluate the promotability of female managers – particularly those with managerial qualifications – positively or negatively. We expect that the results of the current study present empirical evidence on the paradoxical role of female supervisors in the career prospects of female managers (Inesi and Cable 2015).