Move over Sheryl Sandberg and Mary Barra, Americans prefer male bosses to their female counterparts, according to Gallup's Women and the Workplace survey results.

Data from previous Gallup work and education polling conducted in August found one-third of those surveyed preferred a male supervisor while 20 percent preferred a woman. Last year, 23 percent said they preferred a woman boss.

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Forty-six percent of respondents said they didn't have a preference, which is a 5 percent increase over last year, but down from the high water mark of 49 percent with no preference in 2002. Some 58 percent of men said they didn't care about the gender of their boss, up from 51 percent in 2013.

Women were more opinionated when it came to boss gender. Only 34 percent said they didn't care whether the boss was a man or a woman.

Reasons for this were eminently debatable with theories ranging from "queen bee syndrome" in which women viewed those climbing corporate ladders as being less supportive to increased stress from fellow women bosses and beliefs men were better mentors.

Another finding pointed to a slow upwardly mobile climb by women executives. In 2013, 30 percent of those surveyed said they had a woman boss. That number increased to 33 percent this year.

Upwardly mobile female manager probably will continue as a growing trend, if worker attitudes were any indication. People working for women bosses were more likely to prefer another female boss rather than a male in the future.

Frank Newport, Gallup editor-in-chief, said that attitude might mean that preferences for female supervisors might rise as more women became bosses.

Gallup has asked these questions since 1953 when nearly two-thirds of Americans said they preferred a male boss, one-quarter said they didn't have a reference and only 5 percent said they preferred a woman boss.

The bottom line, according to Gallup, was that gender preferences for bosses hadn't changed much since the 1980s, despite a record number of female CEOs. However, that record represents less than 5 percent of all CEOs.

The number of people who didn't care whether the boss was male or female, though, showed the greatest increase over the last three decades, Gallup said.

Date was taken from telephone polling on landlines and cell phones conducted Aug. 7-10, 2014. Gallup spoke with 1,032 adults, 18 years and older in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The margin of error was plus-or-minus 4 percent

TagsGallup, bosses, Management, women, workplace, polling