When Anna, a 32-year-old IT skilled, began her first job, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than she discovered herself dealing with a nasty case of job creep. “They mentioned, ‘Hey, are you able to do that different factor too for somewhat bit? It’ll be like 10% of your time.’ However that became principally doing a second full-time job,” Anna informed me.
So she scheduled a gathering along with her supervisor to ask for a wage that accounted for the added duties of her expanded position. “I laid it out, ‘Right here’s what I’ve taken on, right here’s how I’m spending my time, right here’s what my days seem like. Can we renegotiate a wage to compensate me for the work I’m doing?’” Anna mentioned. Not solely did her supervisor refuse her request, he not-so-subtly shamed her for asking. “‘You’re asking for more cash? We’re a startup,’” she remembers him saying. “It was form of like, ‘You’re ungrateful. How dare you ask for more cash, regardless that we’re asking you to do two jobs?’”
After that preliminary negotiation try, every thing felt like a struggle. Her boss would make guarantees of bonuses and better pay if she took on extra obligations and work past her job title, however although Anna did these issues, the raises by no means arrived. “It makes you’re feeling loopy,” mentioned Anna, “You’re getting suggestions like, ‘That is the way you get acknowledged and that is the way you get rewarded.’ I did all these issues.” But each time Anna tried to advocate for herself within the methods she’d been taught, she discovered herself thwarted or dismissed. “It begins to make you’re feeling like, ‘Effectively, am I overasking? Do I actually should make this quantity?’ You’re combating to receives a commission. You’re feeling such as you’re getting there and also you’re having the suitable conversations, nevertheless it’s form of like spinning your wheels,” she mentioned.
If any of this sounds acquainted, know that it’s not simply you.
The very traits and behaviors that males, notably cis, straight, white, able-bodied males, can reliably implement to get forward, when enacted by ladies, even in the identical conditions, are sometimes perceived as a legal responsibility, not an asset.
He’s unbiased. What a go-getter.
She’s unbiased. How egocentric.
He’s formidable. That’s simply what we’d like.
She’s formidable. Who does she assume she is?
He’s assertive. What a terrific chief.
She’s assertive. What a bitch.
A purpose not to hire, work with, promote, or reward ladies will be the identical purpose to rent, work with, promote, and reward males.
“Aiming excessive is perceived in a different way when enacted by empowered ladies than by empowered males,” Jennifer Dannals and colleagues discovered of their paper “The Dynamics of Gender and Options in Negotiation.” Within the research, they analyzed the outcomes of over 2,500 negotiators to grasp why ladies sometimes skilled worse negotiation outcomes. Have been they much less assertive? Negotiating much less often? Doing so much less successfully? The researchers discovered no proof for any of those go-to explanations. Ladies have been much less more likely to get what they requested for not as a result of they weren’t being assertive however as a result of they have been.
Ladies’s assertiveness challenges patriarchal gender stereotypes of how ladies “ought to” behave—heat, compassionate, and dependable. And possibly extra to the purpose—not assertive, aggressive, or formidable. Dannals’s analysis advised that it’s this patriarchal gender position “transgression,” fairly than ladies’s negotiation ways in and of themselves, that triggers the penalties towards them.
But when getting access to equal alternative, energy, and pay will depend on our willingness to ask for extra, and girls aren’t imagined to ask for extra, how are we imagined to get forward? How do you obtain your skilled ambitions whenever you’re extra more likely to be punished for having these ambitions within the first place?
This catch-22 is what researchers check with because the double bind: We inform anybody who needs to get forward that they must be sturdy, daring, and assertive—traits that (conveniently) align with patriarchal stereotypes of masculinity (notably in individualistic cultures like these of the U.Ok., Australia, and the US). However as a result of these patriarchal gender stereotypes additionally dictate that girls be nurturing, accommodating, and deferential to others (particularly males), formidable ladies typically discover themselves in a no-win state of affairs: In the event that they specific stereotypically female qualities, their competence and management potential will be questioned. And in the event that they specific stereotypically masculine qualities, they are often labeled unlikable, “not a crew participant,” or “not a great match.”
These biases are mostly present in roles and industries stereotyped as masculine—which simply occur to be people who supply entry to increased pay, higher autonomy, and extra energy. A 2020 paper finding out ladies’s successes in male-stereotyped domains like STEM and finance, for instance, confirmed that girls who have been arbitrarily assigned to management roles in these fields confronted fewer penalties once they succeeded than ladies who had actively pursued their management positions. So it was OK for girls to efficiently lead so long as they hadn’t actively aimed for the chance to take action.
That is the place we are able to straight see the ambition penalty in play. When ladies are perceived as pursuing knowledgeable or management objective, the pursuit is resented much more than the precise achievement of that objective. It’s this expression of ambition—the “audacity” of ladies to boost their hand and put themselves ahead—that triggers the best blowback towards them.
For these of us raised on recommendation like Good Ladies Don’t Get the Nook Workplace and Woman, Cease Apologizing, the backlash that may observe what looks like an easy request for extra alternative or accountability can come as a tough shock. “I did really feel like Rattling, ought to I’ve simply left it alone? Ought to I’ve not pushed onerous on the wage? I used to be positively blaming myself,” remembered Carla, who, after years of working to transition right into a marketing position, had her job supply rescinded when she tried to barter a bump in wage from $40,000 to $45,000 a 12 months.
Or Nadia, a publishing skilled in her thirties, who after 4 interviews and being assured that she was everybody’s best choice was informed, “It looks like truly, this isn’t a good match for you, and good luck discovering one thing else,” after asking for a wage commensurate along with her expertise. “You’re feeling silly for considering that you can negotiate. You’re feeling nugatory—like they actually don’t worth you in any respect. And that your work isn’t actually price something,” mentioned Nadia.
Sure, we have been a part of a technology that was warned (and warned once more) that girls simply don’t assert their ambitions sufficient. However the information present that these claims merely don’t stand as much as scrutiny. For instance, in a 2018 paper titled “Do Ladies Ask?” researchers found that girls requested for raises simply as typically as males did. However ladies have been nonetheless much less more likely to obtain them. “Our principal discovering—ladies do ask—holds in each giant and small corporations, and holds for girls with and with out superior ranges of schooling,” wrote the authors, concluding, “Whereas ladies do now ask they ‘don’t get.’”
“And but we’re nonetheless getting informed, ‘Simply ask, simply ask,’” mentioned Caroline, a twenty-six-year-old tech employee whose job supply was withdrawn after she requested to barter the wage and advantages. “I’ve talked to a few different ladies that mentioned, “Sure, this occurred to me. I attempted to barter and the corporate both ghosted me or rescinded the supply.’”
So whereas encouraging ladies to advocate for themselves and take possession of their ambitions shouldn’t be a nasty factor in and of itself, the present dialogue nonetheless too typically positions it as a easy and simple resolution to power and typically even violent inequality. And within the course of, the double requirements perpetuated by sexism, racism, and different biases that pervade our day-to-day realities stay casually ignored.
For instance, analysis has discovered that girls are given extra detrimental evaluations once they self-promote—with ladies who self-promote throughout a job interview rated much less likable and worthy than those that don’t. And it seems that it’s this actual elevated potential for backlash, not a insecurity, that forestalls ladies from self-promoting to the identical extent sooner or later. Now if we contemplate all the methods during which ladies’s ambitions are penalized, we are able to begin to perceive how a lot of what we’ve attributed to “ladies holding themselves again” is definitely a response ladies have consciously or subconsciously tailored to keep away from these penalties of their very own ambitions.
In different phrases, it’s not a concern of self-promoting or talking up or asking or negotiating that’s the issue; it’s the implications ladies nonetheless disproportionately face once they do. And recognizing that distinction can make clear the place the accountability for change actually lies.
Excerpted from The Ambition Penalty: How Company Tradition Tells Ladies to Step Up—and Then Pushes Them Down. Copyright © 2026 by Stefanie O’Connell. Out there from Fundamental Enterprise, an imprint of Hachette E-book Group, Inc.
