Women are in a “no win” situation and walk a tightrope of meeting societal demands for women to demonstrate female characteristics of compassion, warmth, communication and collaboration vs leadership characteristics  (dominated by male characteristics) of forceful, assertive, dominant and competitive.

Did you know? When women display male characteristics, they are seen as competent but not liked.  When they display female characteristics they are viewed as less competent. Women leaders are seen as competent or likeable but rarely both. I saw this play out in my own career and it is incredibly frustrating.

And when you add women of different race, ethnic, sexual and gender identities to the tightrope of gender bias it gets even more complicated navigating the ladder to success.

A few ways bias shows up:

• Pay gap
• #Metoo  wakeup call  sexual abuse, harassment, microaggressions at work
• COVID and “second shift” awareness
• Who gets promoted or the cool assignments
• Who gets listened to

How else have you seen bias show up?