When Anna, a 32-year-old IT skilled, began her first job, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than she discovered herself going through a nasty case of job creep. “They stated, ‘Hey, are you able to do that different factor too for somewhat bit? It’ll be like 10% of your time.’ However that was mainly 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 appear like. Can we renegotiate a wage to compensate me for the work I’m doing?’” Anna stated. 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 little 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 are feeling loopy,” stated 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 are feeling like, ‘Nicely, am I overasking? Do I actually need to make this quantity?’ You’re preventing to receives a commission. You are feeling such as you’re getting there and also you’re having the precise conversations, but it surely’s form of like spinning your wheels,” she stated.
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 girls, even in the identical conditions, are sometimes perceived as a legal responsibility, not an asset.
He’s impartial. What a go-getter.
She’s impartial. How egocentric.
He’s bold. That’s simply what we’d like.
She’s bold. Who does she assume she is?
He’s assertive. What an excellent chief.
She’s assertive. What a bitch.
A cause not to hire, work with, promote, or reward girls could be the identical cause to rent, work with, promote, and reward males.
“Aiming excessive is perceived in a different way when enacted by empowered girls than by empowered males,” Jennifer Dannals and colleagues discovered of their paper “The Dynamics of Gender and Alternate options in Negotiation.” Within the research, they analyzed the outcomes of over 2,500 negotiators to know why girls sometimes skilled worse negotiation outcomes. Have been they much less assertive? Negotiating much less steadily? Doing so much less successfully? The researchers discovered no proof for any of those go-to explanations. Ladies have been much less prone 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 girls “ought to” behave—heat, compassionate, and constant. And perhaps extra to the purpose—not assertive, aggressive, or bold. Dannals’s analysis instructed that it’s this patriarchal gender position “transgression,” fairly than girls’s negotiation techniques in and of themselves, that triggers the penalties towards them.
But when getting access to equal alternative, energy, and pay depends upon our willingness to ask for extra, and girls aren’t presupposed to ask for extra, how are we presupposed to get forward? How do you obtain your skilled ambitions once you’re extra prone to be punished for having these ambitions within the first place?
This catch-22 is what researchers seek advice from because the double bind: We inform anybody who desires to get forward that they must be robust, daring, and assertive—traits that (conveniently) align with patriarchal stereotypes of masculinity (notably in individualistic cultures like these of the U.Okay., 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), bold girls typically discover themselves in a no-win state of affairs: In the event that they categorical stereotypically female qualities, their competence and management potential could be questioned. And in the event that they categorical stereotypically masculine qualities, they are often labeled unlikable, “not a group participant,” or “not a great match.”
These biases are mostly present in roles and industries stereotyped as masculine—which simply occur to be those who provide entry to greater pay, larger autonomy, and extra energy. A 2020 paper learning girls’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 after they succeeded than girls 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 immediately see the ambition penalty in play. When girls are perceived as pursuing an expert or management aim, the pursuit is resented much more than the precise achievement of that aim. It’s this expression of ambition—the “audacity” of girls to lift their hand and put themselves ahead—that triggers the best blowback towards them.
For these of us raised on recommendation like Good Women Don’t Get the Nook Workplace and Lady, Cease Apologizing, the backlash that may comply with what looks as if a simple 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 arduous 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 provide rescinded when she tried to barter a bump in wage from $40,000 to $45,000 a yr.
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 as if really, 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 are feeling silly for considering that you could possibly negotiate. You are feeling nugatory—like they actually don’t worth you in any respect. And that your work isn’t actually value something,” stated 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 girls have been nonetheless much less prone to obtain them. “Our important discovering—girls do ask—holds in each giant and small firms, and holds for girls with and with out superior ranges of schooling,” wrote the authors, concluding, “Whereas girls do now ask they ‘don’t get.’”
“And but we’re nonetheless getting informed, ‘Simply ask, simply ask,’” stated Caroline, a twenty-six-year-old tech employee whose job provide was withdrawn after she requested to barter the wage and advantages. “I’ve talked to 3 different girls that stated, “Sure, this occurred to me. I attempted to barter and the corporate both ghosted me or rescinded the provide.’”
So whereas encouraging girls to advocate for themselves and take possession of their ambitions just isn’t a nasty factor in and of itself, the present dialogue nonetheless too typically positions it as a easy and simple answer to persistent 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 neglected.
For instance, analysis has discovered that girls are given extra detrimental evaluations after they self-promote—with girls 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 stops girls from self-promoting to the identical extent sooner or later. Now if we think about all the methods wherein girls’s ambitions are penalized, we are able to begin to perceive how a lot of what we’ve attributed to “girls holding themselves again” is definitely a response girls have consciously or subconsciously tailored to keep away from these penalties of their very own ambitions.
In different phrases, it’s not a worry of self-promoting or talking up or asking or negotiating that’s the issue; it’s the results girls nonetheless disproportionately face after 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. Accessible from Fundamental Enterprise, an imprint of Hachette E book Group, Inc.
