Latest / Women at Work: Career, Leadership & Modern Work / Why Women Leaders Face a Higher Communication Burden
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to start with a number that caught me off guard. A 2025 study looked at internal meeting transcripts and email threads across a dozen Fortune 500 companies, and they found that women executives' communications — for decisions of equivalent scope and authority — were on average 18 percent longer than their male peers'. Luna: Eighteen percent longer — meaning they wrote more, said more, to communicate the same decision. Lucas: Exactly. And the researchers didn't code this as 'women being more verbose.' They coded it as women providing more context, more justification, more anticipatory reasoning — because they knew that if they didn't, they'd be perceived as abrupt, or cold, or unapproachable. Luna: Right — the likeability penalty we've talked about before, but specifically tied to how you communicate a decision. If a male VP sends a two-line email saying 'We're going with Option A, here's the timeline,' that's seen as decisive. If a female VP sends the same two-line email, it can be read as brusque. Lucas: The researchers called it the 'communication tax.' And it's not just about email length. It's the extra cognitive overhead of deciding how much context to include, the extra time crafting the message, the extra minutes in meetings answering questions that a male colleague wouldn't get. Luna: So it's a real time cost. Did the study put a number on that? Lucas: They did. They estimated that for a senior director or VP level woman, the communication tax consumes roughly four to six hours per week. That's meetings that run longer, emails that take more drafts, Slack messages that get rephrased. Luna: Four to six hours a week — that's like an extra half day of work, every week, just to be heard at the same level. Lucas: And those hours compound. Over a year, that's 200 to 300 hours — time that could go toward strategic thinking, sponsorship of junior talent, or frankly, rest. Instead, it's spent on the invisible labor of managing perception through communication. Luna: I've definitely felt this myself. I remember early in my career, I'd write an email, then go back and add three more sentences of context because I was afraid of sounding too blunt. And my male counterpart would send something much shorter and get praised for being direct. Lucas: That's exactly the pattern the data captures. And what's interesting is that women are often aware of this tax — but they feel like they can't stop paying it because the penalties for not paying it are worse. Luna: If I'd sent that shorter email, I might have been labeled as 'difficult' or 'not a team player.' So I paid the tax to avoid the likeability penalty. Lucas: That's the double bind. And it's not just about avoiding negative perceptions. The study also found that women who did communicate more succinctly were rated lower on 'trustworthiness' and 'collaboration' in 360 reviews — while men communicating the same way were rated higher on 'efficiency.' Luna: So the same communication style is interpreted differently based on the gender of the speaker. That's textbook unconscious bias. Lucas: It is. And the researchers controlled for title, tenure, and even team size. The pattern held across industries — tech, finance, healthcare, consumer goods. Luna: Let's talk about one specific example they highlighted. I read that they profiled a VP at a tech firm who managed to reclaim time by changing how she communicated in meetings. Lucas: Yes — she was at a large software company. She noticed that in weekly leadership meetings, she would spend the first five minutes of her update explaining context and rationale, while her male colleagues would jump straight to the decision. So she tried a different approach: she sent a one-page pre-read 24 hours before the meeting, with the context and rationale. Then in the meeting, she just stated the decision and the ask. Luna: And how did that land? Lucas: Initially, a couple of colleagues said they hadn't read the pre-read, so they asked her to recap. But she held the line — she said, 'I'm happy to discuss any questions, but the context is in the document.' After about three weeks, people started reading it. She cut her meeting update time from eight minutes to three, and she said it saved her about four hours a week overall. Luna: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small way to keep this kind of conversation going without any ad breaks. We appreciate it. Luna: So back to the VP — she saved four hours a week. But that strategy required her to change the norm, not just her own behavior. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the bigger point. Individual coping strategies can help, but the real solution is changing the expectation. Some companies are starting to adopt what they call 'decision clarity norms' — standards for how decisions are communicated, regardless of who's communicating them. Luna: What does that look like in practice? Lucas: A few organizations have implemented a simple template: every decision communication — email, Slack, meeting — includes the decision itself, the key rationale in one or two bullet points, and the action needed. That's it. No extra context required. And they apply that template to everyone, from the CEO down. Luna: So it removes the ambiguity. Women don't have to guess how much context they 'should' provide, because the norm is clear. Lucas: Right. And early data from a pilot at one financial services firm showed that after six months, the average length of decision-related emails from women dropped by 22 percent, while the perceived clarity and trustworthiness ratings actually increased — for both men and women. Luna: So the template helped everyone communicate more effectively, but it disproportionately reduced the tax on women. Lucas: That's the kind of structural fix that actually addresses the root cause rather than putting the burden on individual women to 'lean in' differently. Luna: But not every workplace has those norms yet. So for a woman listening who feels she's paying this tax, what can she do in the meantime? Lucas: The researchers had a few practical suggestions. First, audit your own communication for a week. Note which messages you spend extra time on, and ask yourself: 'Would a male colleague in my role send this much context?' If the answer is no, experiment with trimming it. Luna: And accept that you might get some pushback initially — like the VP who had to hold the line on her pre-read. Lucas: Exactly. Second, when you do provide extra context, frame it explicitly. Say, 'I'm including background because this decision touches three teams,' rather than just including it silently. That signals intentionality. Luna: That's smart — you're not just rambling, you're making a strategic choice. Lucas: Third, ask for feedback on your communication style — but ask specific questions. Not 'Am I communicating well?' but 'Do you feel I give enough context, or too much?' That gives you data. Luna: And fourth, if you're in a position to influence team norms, advocate for a decision clarity template. It doesn't have to be a big policy change — just a team agreement. Lucas: Right. And the research suggests that when teams adopt these norms, everyone benefits. Men also report spending less time drafting emails because they have a clearer structure. Luna: So the communication tax isn't just a women's issue — it's an efficiency issue for the whole organization. Lucas: Exactly. But the burden falls disproportionately on women, and recognizing that is the first step to fixing it. Luna: I think the key takeaway for me is that this tax is real, it's measurable, and it's costing women hours every week. And there are things we can do as individuals and as teams to reduce it. Lucas: The 18 percent longer finding really stuck with me. It's a concrete number that makes an invisible burden visible. Luna: And now that we see it, we can start to challenge it — both in ourselves and in our workplaces. Lucas: That's the hope. Thanks for having this conversation, Luna. Luna: Always, Lucas. See you next time.