The discussed literature makes clear that gender stereotypes often shape expectations and evaluations. These gender-based schemas can be of large influence on the development and/or maintenance of LMX, because people tend to ignore the actual behaviour and/or performance of others if it is incongruent with their expectations (Adebayo & Udegbe, 2004). Literature on gender stereotypes in LMX has several suggestions on which dyadic relationships seem to be of lowest and highest quality. Goertzen and Fritz (2004) suggest that female leaders have lower LMX, with both male and female subordinates; Adebayo and Udegbe (2004) argue that female-female dyads are of lowest quality, as explained by the queen bee syndrome; and that male leader-female subordinate dyads are of highest quality, as explained by paternalism theory.

Despite the fact people often rely too much on gender expectations and biases, there can be some truth to them. Gender differences between men and women do exist and seem to be of influence on their relationships and LMX. Women’s relationship-oriented approach seems to indicate that women generally have better LMX relationships than men. This would imply that male-male dyadic relationships are of lowest quality, and female-female of highest quality. Since females seem to invest more time and effort in their relationships, it is suggested that females communicate more easily with each other than with men (Varma & Stroh, 2001). A theory that would agree with female-female dyads being of highest quality is the similarity-attraction theory. This paradigm suggests that perceived similarity causes people to be attracted to each other, and thus have better relationships. According to this theory, male-male and female-female dyads are most likely to be of high quality, as gender similarity could lead to a higher LMX.