Latest / Women at Work: Career, Leadership & Modern Work / The Resilience Penalty Women Face at Work
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about something I've been seeing in workplace data that doesn't have a neat label yet, but it's everywhere once you notice it. Luna: I'm listening. What's the pattern? Lucas: It's the expectation that women — particularly women in leadership or high-demand roles — should be endlessly resilient. That they should absorb chronic stress, extra work, and institutional friction without showing strain. Luna: Right, and when they do push back, they're seen as difficult or not a team player. Lucas: Exactly. There's a recent study out of the University of California that I think puts numbers on this. They looked at mid-career professionals across several large firms and found that women who were described as 'resilient' by their managers got assigned roughly 30 percent more crisis work — the last-minute, high-stakes, emotionally draining projects — than men with similar performance reviews. Luna: Thirty percent. That's not marginal. And I bet the label 'resilient' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — you get more because you can handle it. Lucas: That's exactly the mechanism. The study called it the 'resilience tax.' When someone is perceived as resilient, colleagues and managers feel comfortable loading them up. And here's the kicker — when women in the study did set boundaries, like saying 'I need more resources' or 'I can't take another emergency,' they were rated lower on likeability and commitment. Men who said the same thing were rated higher on leadership potential. Luna: So women are penalized both ways. If you're resilient, you get dumped on. If you speak up, you're labeled as difficult. Lucas: Right. And this isn't about individual grit or weakness. It's a systemic pattern that wears women down over time. I think one reason it's hard to spot is that resilience is seen as a virtue — we praise it. But the workplace has turned it into a cost center for certain people. Luna: Let's ground this in a real example. I was talking to a VP of operations at a mid-sized tech firm — she's a listener, actually — and she told me she was the go-to person for every failing project. Her boss would say, 'You're the only one who can fix this.' And she did fix it, repeatedly. But after two years of that, she was exhausted, and her performance review said she needed to 'delegate more.' Lucas: Oof. That's the double bind in action. She was rewarded for being resilient with more crisis work, then penalized for not managing her workload differently — even though the workload came from above. Luna: Exactly. She eventually left the company. And when she did, her boss said he was 'surprised' because she 'always seemed to handle things so well.' Lucas: That phrase — 'handled it so well' — is almost a red flag. I've noticed that when people say that about a woman, it often means she's absorbing dysfunction that the organization should be fixing. Luna: So what do you do if you're a woman in that position? How do you break the cycle without being seen as complaining or not being a team player? Lucas: The researchers offered a few strategies. One is to name the pattern explicitly — not as a personal complaint, but as a data point. For example, 'I've taken the last three crisis projects. I'm happy to help, but I want to make sure we're distributing this work equitably so the team doesn't burn out.' Luna: That reframes it from personal weakness to team health. I like that. Lucas: Another is to ask for structural support. Instead of just saying yes, say 'I can take this if I can push back my deadline on project X, and if we can get a junior person assigned to help.' That makes the cost of your resilience visible. Luna: And if the manager balks at that, you've surfaced a real problem — they want your resilience but aren't willing to pay for it. Lucas: Exactly. The third strategy is to redefine resilience at the team level. One company in the study started a practice where after any crisis project, the team debriefed not just on the business outcome but on the workload distribution. Who did what? Was it fair? That alone reduced the penalty because it made the pattern discussable. Luna: That's smart. It takes the onus off the individual woman to advocate for herself and puts it on the system. Lucas: Right. And I think for women listening who are in this right now, it's worth tracking your own data. For the next month, note every time you get asked to handle something outside your role — especially the urgent, emotional, messy stuff. Then look at who else is being asked. Luna: That can be an eye-opener. I did something similar early in my career — I realized I was the only person on my team who got asked to cover for absent colleagues. And it was always the 'nice' women. Lucas: And that's the other layer — this disproportionately hits women of color, too. The study found that the resilience tax was highest for Black and Latina women, who were expected to handle not just the work but also the emotional labor of making others feel comfortable during crises. Luna: That's intersectional exhaustion. You're managing the crisis plus managing everyone's feelings about it. Lucas: Exactly. So the fix isn't just about individual boundary-setting. It's about organizations recognizing that resilience is a finite resource, not a personality trait. And when they drain it from certain people, they lose them. Luna: Let's talk about managers specifically. If you're a manager listening, what's one thing you can do tomorrow to avoid imposing this tax? Lucas: I'd say: before you assign that urgent project, check your own assumptions. Are you giving it to someone because they're the most capable, or because they're the most likely to say yes without pushing back? And if it's the latter, consider whether you're relying on their resilience unfairly. Luna: And if you realize you have been doing that, have a direct conversation. Say, 'I've been leaning on you too much. Let's redistribute.' That alone can rebuild trust. Lucas: Absolutely. There's a great example from a law firm in the study — they started tracking 'invisible work' like mentoring, committee assignments, and last-minute client emergencies. They found that women were doing 40 percent more of that work than men. Once it was visible, they set a rule: any partner who assigned a last-minute project had to also assign support staff time to that person. Luna: That's structural. It made the cost visible and forced accountability. Lucas: And it reduced the tax significantly. The women in that firm reported lower burnout and higher retention within two years. Luna: Let's loop back to the individual level. What if you're a woman who's already deep in the resilience trap and you need to get out now, not over months? Lucas: Short term: you can use the 'strategic stall.' When a crisis request comes in, don't say yes immediately. Say, 'Let me check my calendar and priorities. I'll get back to you in an hour.' That gives you time to assess and to prepare a counteroffer. Luna: And also signals that your time has value, not just your willingness. Lucas: Right. Then you come back with conditions: 'I can do this, but I'll need to delay X, and I'll need Y resource.' If the manager can't meet those conditions, you've flagged the trade-off. Luna: And if they still expect you to just do it anyway, that's a major red flag about that manager and that culture. Lucas: It is. And it might be time to start documenting and looking for a different environment. Because the resilience tax doesn't just cost you energy — it costs you career growth. If you're always putting out fires, you're not visible for the strategic, high-visibility work that leads to promotions. Luna: That's the real tragedy. Women get stuck in the firefighting lane and then get passed over for the planning lane. Lucas: Exactly. And if this conversation has been useful to you — if it's helped you see a pattern in your own work or given you a way to talk about it — honestly, that's the kind of thing that makes a listener think, 'Yeah, this was worth my time.' And if that's you, we do have a small ask. Luna: We keep this podcast ad-free, and that's only possible because of listeners like you who choose to support us. If you found value today, you can head to buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: It's completely voluntary. But it helps us keep doing episodes like this — deep, specific, no fluff. So, back to the resilience tax. One final thought: I think the ultimate goal isn't to become more resilient. It's to work in a place where you don't have to be resilient every single day. Luna: That's a powerful reframe. Not 'be stronger' but 'make the environment less taxing.' And I think that's a message worth repeating. Lucas: Absolutely. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll be back next week with another angle on the systems that shape our careers.