What Works for Women at Work

Key Concepts

The four patterns that hold women back at work

“Prove-It-Again! is exactly what it sounds like: women have to prove themselves over and over again much more so than men in order to be seen as equally competent. Prove-It-Again! is descriptive bias that stems from assumptions about the typical woman.” (Preface)

“The Tightrope is prescriptive bias, which stems from assumptions about how women should behave. The Tightrope describes a double bind: women often find that if they behave in traditionally feminine ways, they exacerbate Prove-It-Again! problems; but if they behave in traditionally masculine ways, they are seen as lacking social skills.” (Preface)

“The Maternal Wall consists of both descriptive bias, in the form of strong negative competence and commitment assumptions triggered by motherhood, and prescriptive bias—disapproval on the grounds that mothers should be at home or working fewer hours.” (Preface)

“The Tug of War occurs as each woman tries to navigate her own path between assimilating into masculine traditions and resisting them. ...Women’s different strategies often pit them against each other, as do workplaces that communicate that there’s room for only one woman. All of these pressures often lead women to judge each other on what’s the right way to be a woman.” (Preface)

Prove-It-Again!

Men Are Judged on Their Potential; Women Are Judged on Their Achievements

“Because women seem less natural fits for high-stakes jobs as compared to men, often they are seen as more of a risk for a promotion or an appointment than a comparable man. We spoke with several women who said they were given a promotion but not the title or the increased salary that typically came with the new job. Often their supervisors have them “test out” the new position for months before they feel comfortable making the appointment official—or simply refuse to give them the title at all.” (p. 27)

Men’s Successes Are Attributed to Skill, While Women’s Are Overlooked or Attributed to Luck; With Mistakes, It’s Just the Opposite

“The problem is, as a result of our biases about what success looks like, women’s mistakes tend to be given more weight and remembered longer than men’s. One attorney said when she came up as a candidate for partner at her law firm, someone brought up a mistake she had made years ago, as a second-year associate. ...Said one woman, “‘ man takes a big risk and makes a mistake, that’s considered risky, but he’s taking a chance; a woman does it, then it’s just a big mistake.’” (p. 29)

“A related pattern is that men’s successes tend to be noticed and remembered, while women’s are more likely to be overlooked and soon forgotten. This happens because when people’s behavior conforms to our expectations, we tend to attribute it to some stable, internal trait and assume it reflects a truth about who they really are, whereas when behavior violates our expectations, we’re more likely to attribute it to a fleeting external cause like luck. What’s more, people are likely to ignore or quickly forget information that disconfirms their preexisting hypotheses, so information about men’s competence has more staying power than equivalent information about women.” (p. 30)

Objective Requirements Are Applied Strictly to Women but Leniently to Men

“Directing our attention only to women leaves out a crucial point: often women’s disadvantage stems not from the way they are treated but from the way men are treated. For every woman passed over for a promotion on account of her gender, there’s a man who gets a leg up because of his.” (p. 34)

Women Are “Gossiping”; Men Are “Talking about Business”

“Even when people aren’t talking about anything directly business related, men—and masculinized subject matter—tend to be given a free pass, several New Girls noted. Conversations about sports, for example, are a fully accepted form of professional small talk, which people understand implicitly as a means of building professional relationships. Conversely, conversations about children or shopping or any various feminized subjects are seen as a distraction from the real work at hand.” (p. 38)

Prove-It-Again! Action Plan

Strategy 1: Trump the Stereotype

“One way to combat these stereotypes is to make sure people don’t think ‘businesswoman’ when they see you but rather think Joan or Rachel or Jennifer or whatever your name is.” (p. 44)

“So the single most important part of your Prove-It-Again! Action Plan is to keep careful records of your accomplishments with original documents in real time: “I did this pitch; we got that job.” “Here’s this metric; here’s the number that shows that I met and surpassed it.” “Here’s what the client or my supervisor said about my work.” Commentary is unnecessary: let the facts do the talking.” (p. 45)

Strategy 2: Get Over Yourself

“Stop questioning your own abilities. Be confident and it will increase others’ confidence in you. Doubt yourself and others will doubt you. There’s a real risk in what one New Girl called “waiting to be perfect,” and it’s that you’ll keep waiting forever. Get over your fear of taking risks, get over your inability to self-promote. Internal issues are a good place to start. But that’s only the beginning.” (p. 49)

Strategy 3: Know Your Limits

Strategy 4: Address the Bias—With Kid Gloves?

Strategy 5: Play a Specialized or Technical Role

“Many female executives become known as high performers by developing a special expertise, according to a Catalyst study: ‘Some successful women executives made a point of developing unique skills so as to become indispensable; others built their expertise by gaining external recognition.’” (p. 54)

The Tightrope

The Double Bind

“While women judged as masculine often will be considered for the same opportunities as men, they may also be judged incapable of the parts of the job that require emotional intelligence.6 Women who are seen as very feminine, on the other hand, tend to be judged as low on competence but high on warmth and are often treated kindly but not taken seriously. If you’re “too feminine,” you won’t get the same opportunities as men in the first place. If you’re “too masculine,” you’ll be penalized for lacking in social skills.” (p. 61) 

“Tightrope Action Plan: Neither a Bitch . . .”

“All the advice in this chapter and the next is only relevant if you encounter a problem you are seeking to solve. If you are tomboy-to-butch or happily rocking stilettos and it’s working fine for you, go in peace. But if you are masculine and are encountering backlash or are very feminine and are not being taken seriously, then consider the advice in this chapter and the next if you decide the job is worth it.” (p. 90)

Strategy 1: Be Likable?

“What worked best for women was the “social” style. The study’s conclusion: “social behaviors enhance influence when combined with competence, whereas submissiveness interferes with influence.”13 Women, to be influential, need to be likable.” (p. 92)

Strategy 2: Balance the Masculine and the Feminine

Strategy 3: Stand Your Ground, with Softeners

“Women need to have higher self-awareness than men do, according to sociologists Olivia O’Neill and Charles O’Reilly. In a study tracking female MBA graduates for eight years after business-school graduation, they found that the most successful women were those who displayed masculine traits tempered with high levels of self-monitoring. In fact, the study found that masculinity was positively correlated with success for the high self-monitoring women and negatively correlated with success for the low self-monitoring women.” (p. 94)

“Women mix the masculine with the feminine in a million different ways. There’s no one answer. It’s up to you to find a softener that feels authentic to you. If it doesn’t feel authentic, it won’t work.” (p. 96)

Strategy 4: Laugh It Off

Strategy 5: Manage Your Anger

“According to business professors Victoria Brescoll and Eric Luis Uhlmann, it’s particularly important for women to offer a concrete external attribution for their anger.22 Explaining why a situation makes you angry subverts stereotypes by tying your anger to an external cause. Instead of being cast as an “angry woman,” you become a woman who is angry.” (p. 99)

Strategy 6: Let the Facts Speak for Themselves

“The principle of self-promotion is simple: you can’t expect to get credit for accomplishments no one knows about. But for women, things get complicated fast. For one thing, women are socialized to be self-effacing and to underplay their accomplishments—and when they do advertise their achievements, they’re often subject to backlash that self-promoting men don’t face.” (p. 103)

Strategy 7: Use the “Strom Thurmond Principle”

“The Strom Thurmond principle is that when men are very committed to traditional masculinity, it’s sometimes possible to use that to your advantage. Acting feminine can be a way to get traditionally masculine men to let down their guard enough to hear what you’re saying.” (p. 105)

Strategy 8: Round Up a Posse

“Having a posse brag on your behalf helps keep backlash at a minimum, because not only does it get your name and your accomplishments out there, it also makes clear that you have allies and supporters of your work. In return, of course, you do the same for them.” (p. 106)

“Tightrope Action Plan: . . . Nor a Bimbo”

Strategy 1: Just Say No to Office Housework

Strategy 2: Make the Housework Work for You

“In order to ensure you’re getting the credit you deserve, here are five things you can ask for when you’re taking on a new project: “(p. 115)

1. “Take something off your plate.” (p. 115)

2. “Get credit for the time you spend on the project.” (p. 115)

3. “Negotiate for a higher-status team member to help you out. That way you can build a valuable connection with someone at your company, and his or her reputation can lend gravitas and prestige to the project.” (p. 115)

4. “Ask for a direct report to a higher-up. Again, this will help you make connections with powerful people at your company and give you a chance to talk about your project with someone who has real influence.” (p. 115)

5. “Secure a budget.” (p. 115)

6. “Establish a sunset and a succession plan.” (p. 115)

Strategy 3: “Doormat Nice” versus “Gender-Neutral Decent”

“Remember, this is work, not a popularity contest. If you have to choose between being respected and being liked, go for the respect every time.” (p. 117)

Strategy 4: Stop Apologizing

Strategy 5: Flirt—Carefully

The Maternal Wall

“A study conducted by sociologists including Stanford’s Shelley Correll found that when subjects were given identical resumes, one but not the other belonging to a mother, nonmothers received 2.1 times as many callbacks as equally qualified mothers and were recommended for hire 1.8 times more frequently than mothers.” (p. 132)

“This is a type of prescriptive bias, explain the authors of “Cognitive Bias and the Motherhood Penalty”: “Employers discriminate against mothers because they believe mothers should be home with their children. Mothers who demonstrate high levels of commitment to paid work violate prescriptive stereotypes about the appropriate place for women.” This study found that mothers who are seen as particularly accomplished are penalized at work because they are seen as bad mothers.” (p. 137)

Maternal Wall Action Plan

Strategy 1: Let People Know That You Remain Committed to Your Work

“So, when you return from maternity leave, let the people around you know you remain committed to your career. The best approach is, before you leave to have or adopt your baby, to put a date on the calendar on which you will call your supervisor and have a conversation about your reentry plan.” (p. 155)

Strategy 2: Tolstoy Was Wrong

Strategy 3: Get Over Yourself, Squared

“It’s not necessarily a part of kids’ job descriptions to be gentle with their parents, but it is a part of your job description to be gentle with yourself. Your kids will do what you do, not what you say, and if you’re proud of your job, they may well grow up to be proud of you.” (p. 160)

Strategy 4: “Don’t Leave before You Leave”

Strategy 5: Set Clear Limits

“Another woman this New Girl knows tells her children at the beginning of every semester to pick three events they want her to attend. They get to pick, and no matter what, she will be there. This is a common strategy: a Fortune 500 executive told us she used to sit down with her daughter at the beginning of the school year to look over the calendar. Making it clear to your family that they can count on you when you promise you’ll be there can go a long way toward assuaging your own guilt and making your children feel like a priority.” (p. 164)

Strategy 6: Demand Change at Home

Strategy 7: Present Solutions, Not Problems

Strategy 8: Your Dirty Little Secret?

“A generation ago, there was only one option for working mothers with regard to talking about children in the office: just don’t. By far the majority of the women we spoke with said they made an effort to mention their children as little as possible.” (p. 173)

The Tug of War

“Instead our contention is this: that women’s workplace fights over gender play a much larger role in complicating office politics for women than do men’s fights over gender with men. The reasons for this are complex, and it’s the bottom line that’s important—gender bias against women often fuels conflict among women.” (p. 180)

“In addition to the increased pressure and scrutiny that drives some women lawyers to require more from their support staff, Batlan observed, the relationship between legal secretaries and women lawyers also reflects the Tightrope. Women lawyers fill a traditionally masculine role, while their secretaries fill a traditionally feminine one. “Secretaries are expected to engage in traditionally feminine behavior such as care giving and nurture, where women attorneys are supposed to engage in what is stereotypically more masculine behavior.” (p. 192)

Tug of War Action Plan

Strategy 1: Recognize the Limits of the Sisterhood

“One important strategy in defusing gender wars is simply to recognize that you will meet some women over the course of your career with whom you have very little in common, and that’s fine.” (p. 207)

Strategy 2: Senior Women: Remember That the Younger Women’s Experience Is Different

Strategy 3: Younger Women: Senior Women May Not Have as Much Power as You Think

Strategy 4: Managing Down Is Just as Important as Managing Up

Strategy 5: Make an Enemy into an Ally

Strategy 6: Get Women Working Together

“The Experience of Gender Bias Differs by Race”

“Women of color were more likely to report each of the four patterns of bias than white women were. The biggest gap concerned Tug of War bias, reported by 59 percent of women of color but only 50 percent of white women. Next came the Tightrope, reported by 77 percent of women of color and 68 percent of white women. The Maternal Wall came third, reported by 63 percent of mothers of color and 56 percent of white mothers. Prove-It-Again! bias showed the smallest gap: 64 percent of white women reported it, as compared with 70 percent of women of color.” (p. 223)

Black, Latina, and Asian women experience the Prove It Again! bias, but their experience differs because of expectations of their competence

“Black women trigger two sets of negative competence assumptions: one because they are women and another because they are black. Many studies document that black people have to provide more evidence of their competence than whites do in order to be seen as equally competent.” (p. 226)

“Yet women who felt they had been helped by the model minority stereotype were rare. Many more reported Prove-It-Again! problems. An Asian American lawyer recalled a situation in which a white man and woman both got promotions in a context where the rules didn’t allow them. ‘You know that the rule only applies to the people it applies to,’ she observed. ‘Generally speaking, women—and women of color—would be strictly held to rules and then some.’” (p. 246)

Different expectations of the femininity or Black, Latina, and Asian women drive different experiences with the Tightrope

“The bad news is that black women are in double jeopardy on the Prove-It-Again! axis. The good news is that black women may have fewer Tightrope problems than white women and other women of color do. Black women may have more leeway to behave in masculine ways because black people, as a group, are seen as more masculine than whites—so masculine-type behavior may seem less jarring in a black woman. Black women also may be less threatening to the power structure simply because they are so marginalized in many professional contexts.” (p. 230)

“Latinas’ Tightrope problems cluster on the “too feminine” side. Clothing is a particularly charged issue, said one scientist, who “toned down” her style so that people would take her more seriously. “I don’t want them to be distracted by my earrings or by the loud print in my shirt or by my hair or whatever. I want them to concentrate on what I am saying,” she said.” (p. 240)

“While black women are seen as more masculine than white women, Asian Americans tend to be seen as more feminine—so it is not surprising that Asian American women reported many “too feminine” problems. An Asian American lawyer noted, ‘There’s a mystique about the Asian woman: we’re so cute and so delicate. . . . You get to the point where you try to ‘mannify’ yourself.’” (p. 248)

All of the groups had different norms (and challenges) on promoting themselves

“Office housework aside, black women were less likely than white women to report feeling that they could not be their authentic selves because of their loyalty to feminine traditions, with two exceptions. One was self-promotion, which may present an even bigger hurdle for black than white women. A lawyer pointed out that black people are taught as children to be humble. “You do not boast because it’s not humble. And it’s important to be humble.” She continued, “You hear over and over again, nobody is better than anyone else.” A scientist agreed: “Even those who do it eventually, it takes a very long time to learn that. And you pay a price for it,” she said.” (p. 232)

“Asian American women reported particular difficulty with self-promotion. “You’re taught to be humble and not boast about your achievements and give credit to others,” said one scientist. This Asian cultural norm can feed the perception that Asian American women are too passive.” (p. 249)

Not all families are the same—and groups differ in the average composition of their families and obligations 

“Among those who were surveyed for Visible Invisibility, women of color were more than four times more likely to be single than were white women: 35 percent of women of color reported being “single, never married,” as compared to 8 percent of white women. And only 56 percent of women of color reported being married, as compared with 81 percent of white women.” (p. 235)

“The assumption that professionals do not have family obligations beyond the nuclear family can lead to particularly negative reactions because of the sense that these obligations aren’t important enough to miss work for. A Latina attorney quoted in a Catalyst report described having to go to the funeral of a cousin’s baby. ‘One partner was like, ‘Who was this?’ the attorney remembered. ‘I don’t think she understood.’” (p. 244)

Quotables

“And then I realized the single most important truth this book offers: women need to be politically savvier than men in order to survive and thrive in their careers. Political savvy does not completely insulate you from gender bias, warns social psychologist Jennifer Berdahl. “As savvy as [women] may be, they may not be able to avoid bias and its devastating effects on their careers.” Fair enough. Savvy is not sufficient, but often it’s necessary: more often for women than men, it is a threshold requirement.” (Preface)

“First, even if the disadvantages women now face in the workplace are small compared with disadvantages women faced a century (or even a decade) ago, relatively small problems have surprisingly large effects over time. Very small differences in how men and women are treated can lead to huge gaps in pay, promotions, and prestige, a phenomenon often called the accumulation of disadvantage.” (p. 5)

“Our basic message is simple: it’s not your fault that the men at your company consistently progress up the career ladder more quickly than women do. It’s not your fault that last year’s review said you needed to speak up for yourself, and this year’s review says you need to stop being so demanding. It’s not your fault that you came back from maternity leave ready to dive back in, only to find yourself frozen out of major assignments. And it’s not your fault that the woman you thought was your mentor has been arguing against the promotion you seek. Plenty of things may happen to you that are your fault, but gender bias isn’t one of them.” (p. 6)

“As more women join the group, the salience of gender decreases. Research has pointed to the “one-quarter” rule: women are less likely to be stereotyped if they make up at least 25 percent of a group. A particularly dramatic study showed that when women make up less than 20 percent of a group, their performance evaluations are significantly lower than men’s.15 When they rise to more than 50 percent of a group, their evaluations actually rise such that they exceed men’s.” (p. 184)

“‘Getting passed over once, I don’t think you need to get all freaked out,’ said an employment lawyer. ‘I think when you’ve been passed over twice, you really need to start doing something or thinking things through. You get passed over three times, it’s a big problem.’” (p. 262)

“There are two key takeaways. The first is, don’t move too often. If it looks like you can’t keep a job, this can have a serious negative impact on your career. A New Girl who works in finance had a simple rule of thumb: ‘It can’t be too hard to explain your resume,’ she said. ‘You have to have a resume that makes sense.’” (p. 266)

“So how unhappy is unhappy enough? One New Girl said she follows the 80 percent rule: ‘I’m generally a happy person. And if I don’t enjoy what I’m doing 80 percent of the time or more, then it’s time to make a change.’” (p. 274)

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.” — MAYA ANGELOU (p. 275)

“Here is one of the most important pieces of advice in the entire book. If there’s something that’s frustrating you, an executive suggested, think it through and “make a choice to either change it, live with it, manage it, whatever—but make a choice.” Ask yourself, “Am I having any breakthroughs? Is anything different from the last time I thought about this and got frustrated?” Don’t allow yourself to obsess about the things that are making you think about leaving. Think them through, for sure. But stop thinking about them when there’s no new learning.” (p. 277)

“Several New Girls mentioned that their complaints about bias or unfair treatment weren’t taken seriously until they announced their intention to leave. Once good workers are ready to quit, companies may scramble to find ways to get them to stay. This can actually be a good negotiation strategy—as long as you’re not bluffing. Threatening to leave with the expectation that you’ll get what you ask for can backfire in a big way.” (p. 281)