Latest / Women at Work: Career, Leadership & Modern Work / The Assertiveness Double Bind for Women at Work
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about something I think every woman listening has felt but maybe hasn't had a name for — the assertiveness double bind. Luna: The classic damned if you do, damned if you don't. Be too direct and you're bossy. Be too collaborative and you're not leadership material. Lucas: Exactly. And there's a really specific study from Columbia Business School — published last summer, May 2025 — that put some hard numbers on this. Researchers ran an experiment where they showed managers identical meeting transcripts, just swapping the gender of the speaker. Luna: And what did they find? Lucas: When a woman spoke first in a meeting, she was rated 17 percent less likable than when a man spoke first with the exact same words. But here's the kicker — she was also rated as slightly more competent. So she gets a competence bump, but a likability penalty. And likability, as we know, drives sponsorship, mentoring, promotion decisions. Luna: Seventeen percent is huge. And I bet that penalty compounds over time. A woman speaks up in five meetings a week, that's five little hits to her social capital. Lucas: Right. And the study also looked at what happens when a woman uses so-called 'tentative' language — phrases like 'I might be wrong, but...' or 'This is just a thought...' — and there, the likability penalty disappeared, but her competence rating dropped by 12 percent relative to a man using the same tentative language. So men can hedge without losing credibility. Women lose either way. Luna: That's the double bind in a nutshell. You can be liked but not respected, or respected but not liked. Lucas: And this isn't just a lab artifact. I talked to a product manager at a major tech firm — she asked not to be named — who told me she started tracking her own meeting contributions after attending a workshop on this. She found that when she made a firm statement, she'd get follow-up questions like 'Can you elaborate?' or 'Are you sure about that?' — but when a male colleague made the same kind of statement, the response was 'Great point, let's explore that.' Same content, different reception. Luna: And those little micro-differences add up. You get interrupted more, your ideas get attributed to someone else later — it's the whole cycle. Lucas: So what do we do about it? Because telling women to just be more assertive ignores the penalty. And telling them to be warmer ignores the competence discount. Luna: One strategy I've seen work — and this comes from a Harvard Business Review piece I read recently — is what they call 'strategic ambassadorship.' Instead of advocating for yourself, advocate for your team or your project. So you say, 'My team's analysis shows X' rather than 'I think X.' That shifts the frame from self-promotion to team leadership. Lucas: That's smart. And it's backed up by another finding from that Columbia study: when a woman used 'we' language instead of 'I' language, the likability penalty dropped by half. The competence rating stayed high. Luna: So it's not about changing your personality. It's about being strategic with your framing. Lucas: And that's really the takeaway here — awareness first, then small tactical shifts. Because the double bind isn't going away overnight, but women can navigate it more effectively once they see it clearly. Luna: Absolutely. And honestly, conversations like this — where we dig into the actual research and share practical takeaways — that's why people tell us they value the show. Lucas: Yeah, we get that feedback a lot. And it's one of the reasons we've kept Women at Work ad-free from the start — we want it to be a resource, not a revenue stream. Luna: If this episode or any of the others has helped you think through a career move, a negotiation, or just a tough meeting — a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Lucas: Every little bit helps us keep digging into these topics. And speaking of digging in — let's get back to the double bind, because there's another layer I want to explore. Luna: What's that? Lucas: The study also looked at how race interacts with the double bind. And the findings are pretty stark. For Black women, the assertiveness penalty was actually smaller than for white women — but the competence penalty for using tentative language was larger. And for Asian women, the pattern flipped: the likability penalty for assertiveness was even bigger than for white women. Luna: So the double bind isn't one size fits all. It's intersectional. And that means the tactical fixes have to be tailored too. Lucas: Exactly. A 'we' language strategy might work well for a white woman in a majority-white team, but an Asian woman might need something different — perhaps anchoring her assertiveness in external data or a clear process. The study suggested that when women cite a specific source or methodology before making a firm statement, the likability penalty drops significantly across all groups. Luna: So instead of saying 'I think we should increase the budget,' you say 'According to the Q2 projections, we should increase the budget by 10 percent.' The data shields you. Lucas: Right. It moves the conversation from person to process. And that's a tactic anyone can use, but it's especially powerful for women who face a steeper likability penalty. Luna: I want to bring in a real-world example. A friend of mine — Sarah, she's a senior engineer — told me she started doing this deliberately after we talked about it. She would open her status updates with 'The metrics from the last sprint indicate...' rather than 'I think we're on track.' She said the room listened more attentively, and her manager started asking her for input first in meetings. Lucas: That's a great anecdote because it shows the shift isn't about being less yourself — it's about being more strategic with how you present your expertise. And over time, that builds a reputation for being data-driven and clear, which is exactly the kind of leadership signal that gets noticed. Luna: And hopefully, as more women do this, it also shifts the norm. If enough people use data-anchored assertiveness, maybe the double bind weakens. Lucas: That's the long game. But for now, the research is clear: awareness plus tactical framing can make a real difference in how women's contributions are perceived. And that perception gap — that 17 percent likability penalty — has real career consequences over a decade. Luna: Seventeen percent per meeting, five meetings a week, fifty weeks a year — that's a lot of lost social capital. No wonder women sometimes hold back. But now we have tools. Lucas: And that's the goal of this show — to give you those tools. So next time you're in a meeting and you feel that tension between being heard and being liked, remember: you can use 'we' language, anchor in data, or frame it as team advocacy. Small shifts, big impact. Luna: Well said. And if you have a tactic that works for you, we'd love to hear about it. You can reach us at women at fexingo dot com — that's women at fexingo dot com. Lucas: Thanks for being here, everyone. We'll be back next week with another episode.