Ask any working woman, especially a senior one, and she'll tell you: the pressure to be everything to everyone is very real.
On one hand, women-identified workers deal with persistent expectations of femininity, built on stereotypes of caretaking and emotional labor. First-class sensitivity, sympathetic smiles, the works. On the other hand, female leaders are expected to act like leaders. That is, direct, decisive, confident, and commanding.
You've probably been there yourself, placating someone at work and upholding the social norms expected of you in the process. It's frustrating, exhausting and, in most cases, completely unnoticed by the person on the receiving end of all those patient laughs, excessive exclamation points, smiley faces and unthanked office chores. The result? Less time and energy spent on actually leading.
One insidious and often overlooked part of this gendered workplace performance, though, is the way women can be expected to perform it while also demanding it of the women above (or even next to) them.
Robin Ely, a Harvard Business School professor and founder of the school's Gender Initiative, has spent more than three decades researching gender dynamics and tokenism at work. What she's found looks like a Russian doll of women criticizing more senior women, especially in organizations where the value placed on women is obvious from how few of them get hired.
"What I often hear from [women] is how they feel about the women above them," she says. "They feel like 'They're not paying enough attention.' 'They act too much like men, and I don't feel any identification with them, and I wish I would.' And I have to remind them, especially if there aren't very many of them, that they might be coming across that same way to the women below them."
"There is a Russian doll of women criticizing more senior women."
And therein lies the trap of gendered manager-to-supervisee thinking: the idea that women are somehow (genetics?!) predisposed to competing with and passing judgment on one another. It's a story we tell ourselves, and unless we're willing to rip it up, it keeps writing itself again and again.
"There's no evidence to suggest that on balance, women don't get along with each other," says Ely. "There is evidence that when you depict a conflict between two women set in the workplace, and you depict the same conflict (the same dynamic, the same words being spoken) between two men, it will be perceived by both men and women as much more negative when it's between women … it's a classic gender bias story."
To illustrate, Ely points to the covers of career advice books. The ones aimed at women are full of sensational language: queen bees, bullies and devils inhabiting the corner office (and how to deal with them). Career advice books aimed at men look a little different, Ely says. "They have all these strong white men on the covers, and it's all about being competitive and strategic leadership, and that's a good thing. 'How to win in the competitive game,' that's what men are being taught. Women are being told they need to be nicer and that they're horrible to each other."
So when strong leadership crosses the borders of feminine propriety, it's all too easy to play that tape. "Conflict between women can get interpreted more negatively and taken more personally because of this stereotype," says Ely. "Not because women are more likely to take things personally. They're not." In other words, the friction between women and their female managers is largely a function of how much power women have, both in their company and in the culture.
And wow, is there friction. When I first reported this piece in 2019, I put out a quick call-out on Twitter (now X) that read: "Have you had a 'bad female boss' who challenged you to examine your own internalized sexism as a woman-identified worker?? I'm writing a story on the dynamics between senior and junior women and the double-bind of being a female manager. DMs open if you have thoughts/feelings!" Pithy, sure, but I figured the mention of internalized sexism meant the answers would be thoughtful and measured. Many were.
Many other DMs, however, included these words: petty, rude, tough, bitch, aggressive, nitpicking, nightmare, condescending, reactive, micromanager, and blunt. Even on a site called Girlboss, women were willing to go on record to trash their female managers. Would the same be true of their male ones? Maybe, but I suspect the language would be different.
On the more measured front, and worth noting: even after describing their horrible bosses, some people pointed to the double bind those bosses were tied in, empathizing with them even as they complained about how much they sucked:
"There are internal and external pressures that make it difficult as a … woman in leadership … Women have to work significantly harder. It's the system that's broken, not the players … But I am reticent to work under a female supervisor."
"On top of being the only woman in charge, guys would joke about her and be jerks sometimes. I've always thought that she felt too much pressure and lashed out."
"I try not to moan at home because my partner [has] likened it to 'high school behavior' and I don't like giving that impression of a professional woman … I still want to show solidarity with the women on my team, even if they're a nightmare!"
The tension between the expectation that women be rational, capable leaders and also emotionally sensitive caretakers and BFFs is palpable. And while it comes from the broader culture, it takes a lot for one person, let alone a whole organization, to name it and push back on it.
"There's a lot of pressure on female leaders to be everything to everybody; exactly what every woman imagines she wants to see in a senior woman," says Ely. "That's a pretty heavy set of expectations to carry, and I think that senior women get pretty tired of it."
"Petty, rude, tough, bitch, aggressive, nitpicking, nightmare, condescending, reactive, micromanager and blunt" are just some of the words women use to describe their female bosses.
Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, co-authors of No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work, agree. Over email, they told me this pressure often puts women in a difficult position: "When they're kind and compassionate, they're well-liked but told they lack leadership potential. But if they speak with confidence, they're chastised for being 'aggressive.' To avoid this kind of judgment, women often end up using qualifiers or hedging words like 'might' and 'I think' to frame requests as questions."
"Even still," Ely adds, "very often senior women don't want to make a big deal about gender because they spent most of their professional lives trying to make it not a big deal. Because when gender is a big deal, it's because it's working against you. That [desire to minimize the role of gender] translates to not wanting to be a mentor, or to be everything that more junior women want you to be."
So lifting up the women below them may not top every female exec's to-do list, especially when junior women frame it as a gendered expectation. These are, after all, the same junior women who might call her a bitch in a Twitter DM. (For what it's worth, a mentor isn't the only kind of senior ally worth having. A sponsor who talks about you in rooms you're not in can matter more.)
The result is one we all know: managers and the people who report to them who don't really like each other. "Once you've decided who the other person is, a nasty person or whatever, that's the trait that gets attributed to her," says Ely. "Then you react to that, and you actually create negative tension in the relationship that might not have otherwise been there. I see stereotypes as the real culprit."
The Damage
Here's how the double standard plays out in the research. In a 2005 study led by New York University psychologist Madeline Heilman, men who went out of their way to help colleagues got rated more favorably for it, while women who did the exact same thing got no extra credit. Flip it around, and women who didn't help were marked down, while men who didn't help weren't. Helping, the researchers concluded, is treated as less optional for women. Look at that kind man, doing something caring. So emotionally intelligent. Well done, him. When a woman does it, it's read as natural. Nothing to see here.
That bodes particularly poorly for senior women who don't conform to feminine ideals in tone, behavior, and even appearance. And naturally, those ideals come with assumptions about race (white), sexual orientation (straight) and class (well presented, good manners, a genial yet quiet demeanor).
Anger is where the gap gets starkest. In a 2008 study, psychologists Victoria Brescoll and Eric Uhlmann found that men who expressed anger at work were given more status, while angry women were given less, whether the woman was a trainee or a CEO. Evaluators chalked a man's anger up to the situation. They chalked a woman's up to her personality: she's just an angry person. For him, a display of power. For her, proof of a serious character flaw, or an invitation to a laywoman's diagnosis of sociopathy.
No surprise, then, that every time I tell fellow women that I've only ever worked for female bosses and managers, they more state than ask: "What's that like?" adding, "Ugh, I would much prefer to work for a man. Less drama." But that's far from the full extent of how women get punished for daring to lead.
Research shows that women who succeed in traditionally male roles are often straight up disliked. Women who promote themselves are rated as more competent but also less likable and less hireable. Then come the adjectives like abrasive and mean.
Linguist Kieran Snyder saw this firsthand when she analyzed 248 performance reviews from 28 companies in 2014. She found that 58.9% of the reviews men received contained critical feedback, compared with 87.9% of the reviews women received. Men's critiques were mostly suggestions for new skills to develop. Women's included sentences like this one: "You can come across as abrasive sometimes … You need to pay attention to your tone." The word "abrasive" showed up 17 times, describing 13 different women, and never once in a man's review.
Eight years later, Textio (the company Snyder co-founded) ran a much bigger version, looking at feedback for more than 25,000 people across 250 organizations. Women still received 22% more feedback about their personality than men, and were more likely to be called abrasive.
As Heilman told Fast Company, women who step outside the stereotype are seen as "out of line, breaking the rules, violating the 'shoulds' of gender stereotypes." Her conclusion: "Men and women are probably behaving exactly the same, but women are taking a hit."
The most frightening part, though, is what all of this costs in time. When women are expected to be everything to everyone (a mentor, a mother, the office cupcake-baker, and a friend), that invisible work eats the hours any leader, or would-be leader, needs for the visible, valued work that actually gets people promoted. A 2017 study in the American Economic Review found that women are more likely than men to be asked to take on low-promotability tasks, and more likely to say yes. Part of the reason, the researchers found, is that everyone expects women to say yes.
And the pipeline still shows it. In McKinsey and LeanIn.Org's Women in the Workplace 2025 report, women held 29% of C-suite roles, and only 93 women were promoted to manager for every 100 men. Women who are often the only woman in the room were more likely to feel excluded and scrutinized, which is exactly the tokenism Ely studies. Only 54% of companies said women's career advancement is a high priority. Is it any wonder some younger women are questioning whether they even want the top job? (Spoiler: the ambition is there. The support often isn't.)
Our expectations of our fellow women are unfair. Worse, they're helping to hold us all back.
The Marching Orders
Despite everything, Fosslien believes change is possible, and that it starts with women letting other women be themselves rather than the version the culture currently expects. "Don't shy away from being decisive and straightforward," she says. "Your colleagues will appreciate the clarity and direction. Phrase requests confidently and clearly. Instead of asking, 'Would it be possible for you to finish a one-page memo by tomorrow?' try 'The client needs the memo by tomorrow end of day. Can you complete it by then?'"
She also points to one of the best-known examples of women's workplace solidarity: amplification, the strategy female staffers used in the Obama White House. "When one female staffer suggested an idea, another would repeat it and give the first woman the credit," she says. "President Obama noticed, and began calling on the women present more frequently."
But fixing something this broken may take more than in-meeting amplification. It may take women pointing the mirror at themselves as much as at the systems that got us here. Ely points to consciousness raising. "Women need to understand these stereotypes, and that they may be prone to evoking them," she says. "They should also be attentive to the degree to which female leaders are valued and respected (or not) in their work environment more broadly. That's something they don't want to take into their relationships with each other."
She continues: "Be really careful about not enacting those things … consciously work to have more candid conversations with each other. Don't react to a trigger … Be particularly aware of the ways your relationships with other women might go off the rails because of stereotypes, and really check yourself."
"Be particularly aware of the ways your relationships with other women might go off the rails because of stereotypes, and really check yourself."
If the woman above you is making work harder, that check-in with yourself comes first. After that, there are practical ways to manage up that don't require deciding she's a villain.
And for senior women managing other women? The same holds true. "A lot of times, senior women feel the need to protect themselves because there's a bad stereotype about them," says Ely. "It's easy to get defensive, but once you're in a defensive place, it's very hard for people to really get to know you and work with you."
"Bring your humanity into the relationship. That's gonna go against the grain when you feel judged," she says, "and it's a challenge. But when people really connect with each other on a human level, they can weather a lot of storms."
The burdens placed on female managers are so well hidden they're essentially invisible, which makes them hard to fix. But we won't get close if we don't start examining our own thoughts and behavior toward leaders of every gender.
Building a culture where feedback is about the work, and not taken personally, is a solid start. So is having an open conversation about boundaries, emotional labor, and the nature of invisible work (it could happen). And while we're at it, how about we embrace the age-old, male-dominated practice of self-promotion? There's nothing wrong with a woman who humblebrags, and there are scripts to help you advocate for yourself if it doesn't come naturally yet.
And for God's sake, let's all agree to stop coddling men at work. Lifting a finger once doesn't earn a lifetime of such-a-nice-guy points, Barry.
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