Women are known to be underrepresented in leadership positions than their male counterparts, but the underlying mechanism for this disparity remains contested. Drawing upon the social role theory, we propose that the gap originates from the difference in the timing of promotion applications. Using archival record of employees’ application for promotion in a private bank in China between 2016 and 2022, we revealed that female employees applied for a promotion to middle-level management later than their male counterparts (i.e., the women employees had a longer job tenure than men at the time of promotion application). Follow-up analyses revealed that female employees applying for promotion at a later timing seem to have a greater success rate of promotion, while male employees applying for a promotion at an earlier timing seem to have a greater success rate of promotion, suggesting that female employees’ later application for promotion may be not a reflection of low career aspiration among themselves, but a strategic choice encountering the evaluators’ bias against women’s early promotion application. Our findings may provide insights in understanding the reasons accounting for gender difference in managerial roles representation from both the applicants’ and the evaluators’ perspectives.
