Emotional intelligence has traditionally and colloquially been ascribed to women, yet theories on the subject appear genderblind and empirical scholarship on gender differences in emotional intelligence has proven inconclusive. To expand theories to be more gender-sensitive and to update research on gender differences in emotional intelligence, we examine whether and how gender differences manifest in emotional intelligence through a meta-analytic review of 716 studies. The results suggest gender effects on general emotional intelligence, as well as more nuanced and at times inconsistent gender effects across specific emotional abilities. Specifically, we found that women performed better in other-focused compared to self-focused emotional abilities, a distinction that has received little attention in emotional intelligence scholarship. The results also show that context affects the results, as people in leadership positions exhibit greater gender differences favoring women compared to non-leaders. Finally, gender differences varied according to the measurement of emotional intelligence, with self-reports seemingly underrepresenting actual gender differences measured by performance measures. Overall, these findings suggest that emotional intelligence theory and research need to better distinguish between self-focused and other-focused abilities, that gender differences may be dependent upon context and that certain types of measurement of emotional intelligence may have obscured gender differences.
