There’s no proof that men make better bosses. There is proof that employees — even female employees — prefer men as bosses.

Consider the data from a Gallup poll:

• 34% of men said they preferred a male boss
• 10% of men said they preferred a female boss
• 40% of women said they preferred a male boss
• 26% of women said they preferred a female boss.

(The remaining respondents of both genders said they had no preference.)

So, the plurality of both men and women said, when given a choice, they’d rather work for a man. And the data from that survey fall right in line with other less formal polls.

• In a survey of Dartmouth MBA candidates, 90% of women said they rather have a male boss.
• In England, 63% of women in one poll responded that they didn’t want another woman as a boss.
• A Forbes Facebook poll showed that women overwhelmingly preferred men as bosses. Why? Some of the respondents left comments, such as:  “Women have been evil bosses to me in the past,”  “Women can be conniving and backstabbing while giving you the nice-nasty smile” and “Absolutely a man, and I speak from personal experience. Women I’ve worked for, with only one exception, tended to feel threatened by me, whereas men were better mentors.”

And here’s where it gets really tricky for women bosses. In a Harvard Business School study, women were especially hard on female bosses who were perceived as “trying to act like a man.” So the women workers said they (a) preferred male bosses and (b) hated women who acted like male bosses.

Few studies exist, however, on whether male-led work groups are, for instance, more profitable or have lower turnover rates than groups led by women. So at the this point, what’s being measured is more about perception than results.