The Same Behaviour. Different Evaluation.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the oldest of two. My parents were determined that my brother and I would have equal opportunities.
Progressive thinking of that era shaped their views. The men’s liberation movement was challenging traditional masculinity, arguing that boys should be allowed to express emotions, to cry, to show vulnerability. “Boys don’t cry” was being questioned.

My brother received encouragement and praise for emotional expression. He got the typical girl toys along with cars and tools.

In our household, committed to equality as it was, the direction still went one way.

I did not get boy toys. No cars. No tools. My emotional expression was not through tears. Mine was strength and assertiveness, but that was not at all encouraged or praised.

I grew up hearing I was too much. Too many opinions, too demanding. My brother, sweet and openly showing his feelings, was labeled the diplomat.

Well-intended, the prevailing understanding of progress at the time encouraged his access to the feminine. My stretch into the masculine fell outside what they knew how to recognise and validate. Roles shifted. Equality remained partial.

It took years to translate too much into assertive. Even more to unapologetically own it.

The impact stayed with me.

When Early Patterns Scale

A boy who speaks up in class is praised for leadership potential. A girl who does the same is told to let others have a turn.

Fast forward twenty years. He negotiates his salary and is seen as knowing his worth. She negotiates hers and is labelled difficult.

Stereotyped? Outdated? We may like to think we have moved forward, but this pattern is documented, measured, and persistent. And it explains more about the leadership gender gap than any conversation about ambition or pipeline.

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The Research Is Clear

Virginia Schein identified the core problem in 1973: when people describe a successful manager, the traits they list align almost perfectly with stereotypically masculine traits. Assertive. Ambitious. Competitive. Decisive. Confident.

She called it Think Manager, Think Male. Fifty years later, the pattern holds.

A 2016 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin examined 63 studies and found that women who display dominance behaviours are consistently rated as less likable than men exhibiting identical behaviours. The painful part is that likability predicts hiring and promotion as much as competence does.

Women in leadership face a choice that is impossible to win.

Act warm and collaborative? Great team player. Weak leader.

Act assertive and directive? Competent. Cold. Abrasive.

I keep hearing it. Women raise their voice to help, men to lead.

McKinsey’s 2024 Women in the Workplace report found that 71% of women receive negative personality feedback versus 2% of men. The same behaviour gets different labels: his confidence is her aggression.

Or she is not assertive enough. Not enough of a go-getter. Not valued for her relationship skills and how she, often quietly, is the factor that keeps things running smoothly. Encourages others, opens doors, helps others succeed, creates stellar teams, but she may not be the one bringing in the big bucks. Simply said: She cannot win.

This asymmetry begins in childhood. Research consistently shows that boys are encouraged to be assertive, physical, and independent. Girls are praised for being helpful, gentle, and cooperative.

Teachers unconsciously praise girls for being quiet and obedient while rewarding boys for showing leadership. Boys learn that assertion is the primary currency. Girls learn to blend assertion with relationship maintenance.

By adulthood, girls underestimate their abilities while boys overestimate theirs. Girls worry more about their grades despite performing better academically.

The message is clear: for girls, being good means being accommodating. For boys, being good means being capable.

Then both arrive in organisations. And the traits rewarded in childhood continue to shape evaluation through gendered lenses.

The Broken Rung

For every 100 men promoted to manager, 81 women are. This gap at the first promotion creates a deficit that compounds at every level.

For women of colour, the numbers are starker: 54 Black women and 65 Latina women for every 100 men.

The path to parity for white women? 22 years. For women of colour? More than twice that.

The asymmetry intensifies with parenthood. Research shows a per-child wage penalty of 5-20% for employed mothers. Fathers? A 6% wage increase. Motherhood activates the caregiver schema. Fatherhood activates the provider schema. One signals split attention. The other signals stability and motivation. Interestingly, explicitly labelling mothers as the family breadwinner makes the penalty disappear entirely.

In meetings, equal speaking time led evaluators to rate women as less competent. Women who expressed anger were seen as out of control; men expressing identical anger were seen as having legitimate grievances.

Research shows women can reduce the assertiveness backlash by about 27% by prefacing direct statements with value phrases that justify their communication style.

But the very need to do this represents an additional cognitive and emotional tax that men simply do not pay.

These biases are held by everyone, including women themselves. We are all shaped by the systems we grew up in. I believe this also helps explain why fewer women advance to leadership levels where decisions are made and futures formed.

The good news: exposure reduces bias. People who have worked with both male and female leaders hold fewer stereotypes about who can lead.

The challenge: we need women in leadership to reduce bias against women in leadership.

For individual women, understanding this research can be liberating. The system is rigged. It is not about you personally.

For organisations, the insight is uncomfortable but essential: fixing individual women is the wrong intervention. The structures, evaluation criteria, and cultural norms need examination.

The data is clear. It is structural, starts in childhood and persists throughout careers. Sadly identical behaviours are evaluated differently based on who performs them.

Naming it precisely is the first step toward working with it strategically. Writing this and posting it publicly is still an act of pushing past that early conditioning. The voice that says you’re too much or this has no value, still lingers. But staying silent serves no one and being defined by old labels is not an option.

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Sources:

Williams & Tiedens meta-analysis on dominance backlash: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26689089/

McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2024: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace

The Socialisation of Gender (Leaper): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232459559_The_Socialization_of_Gender

Motherhood Penalty & Fatherhood Bonus: https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-fatherhood-bonus-and-the-motherhood-penalty-parenthood-and-the-gender-gap-in-pay

Stanford on likability and leadership: https://gender.stanford.edu/news/women-leaders-does-likeability-really-matter

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