Women and men agree on what makes a good leader, but males have a gender bias blind spot and often believe stereotypes do not exist.
Researchers at the University of South Australia found women experienced daily impacts related to gender leadership stereotypes and actively worked to break down these biases.
Men on the other hand were unaware of gender differences and believed they didn't exist.
The research focused on local leadership roles in regions experiencing industrial transformation across government, business, sporting clubs, religious organisations and academia.
All participants were from communities directly affected by the closure of Australia's automotive industry in 2017, in suburban Melbourne, northern Adelaide and Geelong.
Male leaders largely accepted gender norms without question which limited their ability to push for alternate leadership styles, lead researcher Lynette Washington said.
"The study showed we need to bring men into the conversation more," she told AAP.
"Men are wary of addressing ideas of gender, they prefer to think the workplace is egalitarian and fair so they shy away from noticing these things."
Women in the study were keen to discuss their experience of gender bias in leadership and identified how they were impacted by stereotypes.
"But when we asked the men about gender bias, they didn't believe that it existed for women or men leaders," Dr Washington said.
"And because of that, they couldn't deconstruct these ideas to understand how they functioned and impacted people in the workplace."
The study centred around place-based leadership which is a collaborative, community-led approach that aims to improve the social and economic outcomes for a specific community.
Place-based leadership is not about the job a leader is doing but the way they're doing it, with an emphasis on collaboration, leading through persuasion, soft power and networking.
These skills are ones female leaders tended to have more commonly than men, Dr Washington said.
"The findings of our study suggest that greater awareness of gender in leadership would help create more inclusive and effective leadership and this could lead to fairer outcomes," she said.
"If men can't take that first step of acknowledging gender stereotyping in the workplace is real, they can't do the work to address it."
