To quote Taylor Swift 🎶 “I'd be a fearless leader. I'd be an alpha type. When everyone believes ya, what's that like? I'm so sick of running as fast as I can. Wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man.” 🎶 It captures something millions of women have experienced but struggled to articulate: success doesn't always come with acceptance. Research from Lean In found that highly competent women are more likely than equally competent men to face hostility, receive less support, and get less help from colleagues. It's a phenomenon known as the likeability bias, and it disproportionately affects women and people of color. The better a woman performs, the more likely she is to encounter a paradox men rarely have to navigate.

Lean In brought this bias mainstream pointing to Columbia Business School's now-famous Heidi/Howard study. Researchers took the real-life story of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Heidi Roizen and created two identical case studies. The only difference was the name. One group read about Heidi and the other read about "Howard." Students rated Heidi as every bit as competent and effective as Howard, yet they liked her significantly less. “Although they think she’s just as competent and effective as Howard, they don’t like her, they wouldn’t hire her, and they wouldn’t want to work with her,” says Professor Joanne Martin of Stamford University. But why? Their story was exactly the same.

It’s what is referred to as a double-bind. The very qualities that signal leadership in men often become liabilities in women. When a man is assertive, he’s a go-getter; when a woman is, she’s aggressive. When a man gives a directive, he knows what he wants; when a woman does it, she’s controlling and bossy. If a man is strictly business, he’s a professional; but a woman? She’s cold or a b*tch. These judgments are rooted in deeply ingrained expectations about how men and women are "supposed" to behave. Men are expected to be ambitious, competitive, and authoritative. Women are expected to be warm, collaborative, and accommodating. Leadership asks women to violate those expectations, and they're often penalized for doing so. The result is an exhausting balancing act: be confident, but not intimidating; ambitious, but humble; empathetic, but not emotional; show your soft side, but don’t be weak. 

Women understand this balancing act because they live it. 56% say they're concerned about being liked at work, compared with 36% of men, and half admit they hold back their opinions to preserve that likeability, versus just 35% of men. Those instincts aren't imagined, they're adaptive. Likeability bias doesn't just shape perceptions. It influences compensation, promotion opportunities, access to leadership, and burnout. And if a woman at work is liked enough to get promoted, she becomes less liked, while a man becomes more liked. Tired yet?

This is why the leadership gap persists despite decades of progress. As author Alicia Menendez writes in The Likeability Trap, “If you are a woman who strives to lead, you are told one of two things. You're either told you're too much, too assertive, too aggressive, you need to tone it down. Or you're told you're not enough, you don't take up enough space.” The impossible standard doesn't only affect individual careers, it compounds across organizations. In one study, researchers found that a small 5% difference in performance evaluations eventually cut women's representation in leadership in half. Although women made up 58% of entry-level employees, they held just 29% of leadership positions over time. Small biases, repeated consistently, produce enormous disparities.

A lack of representation at the top ripples across the workforce. Still, only 11% of women lead Fortune 500 companies (a record high). This is how bias sustains itself. Not through one dramatic decision, but through thousands of small ones: a performance review, a hiring decision, a promotion, or a passing comment about someone being "too much" or "not leadership material." Individually, they seem small, but collectively, they shape who gets opportunities and who gets left behind.

"Would I get there quicker if I was a man?" Decades after women first entered boardrooms and corner offices, Taylor Swift's question resonates because, too often, leadership is judged differently when it comes from a woman. The day that lyric feels outdated will be the day we've closed the gap.

You’ve probably seen the latest high-tech skincare tools all over your feed. LYMA takes at-home skincare technology a step further. Founded by Lucy Goff, the beauty tech company created the LYMA Laser PRO, a first-of-its-kind at-home device that uses near-infrared laser technology to target the signs of aging without the pain or downtime associated with many in-office laser treatments. It supports more youthful collagen production and improves the appearance of skin on the face and body, all from home. In other words, serious skincare technology without another appointment on your calendar. Welcome to your Power Era.

Manju Bangalore is an engineer, future astronaut, actor, and social impact leader. As the founder of Operation Period, she's working to ensure menstruation is never a barrier to education, work, or opportunity. Since launching the organization, she has distributed more than 300,000 menstrual products, while expanding its mission to advance menstrual health through research, education, and advocacy. Now, she's taking that mission even further. Bangalore is training for OP-01, the first dedicated research spaceflight to study menstruation in microgravity. Previously, she worked on propulsion systems and spacecraft interfaces at NASA's Marshall and Johnson Space Centers and on science policy in the Obama White House. She is also the author of the children's book You Can Be All The Things You Want To Be.

What’s the worst career advice you’ve gotten?

“Pick one thing.” I grew up hearing that, despite having many multidisciplinary interests. That advice continued as I built my career. I wanted to become an astronaut, act, run my own non-profit, and be a scientist and engineer. I was consistently told I was spreading myself too thin and needed to focus on one thing. But I’ve disregarded that advice to great success.

What’s the best piece of non-obvious career advice you’ve gotten?

Be loud about your goals. It wasn't advice I heard early in my career, but it was something I learned by watching others openly share their ambitions, setbacks, and rejections. It taught me that people genuinely want to help, but no one is a mind reader and they can't support goals they don't know about. Being transparent creates opportunities for mentorship, collaboration, funding, and unexpected connections. That's a mindset I've carried into everything I do.

What was a heartbeat moment for you in your career?

Eleven years ago, I started a non-profit called Operation Period. We started out as a product distribution organization, delivering over 300,000 menstrual products to people who were unhoused or low income, and providing health education to thousands around the world. We had been using the framework of equitable access to menstrual products. But in 2019, I started reading more academic literature and coined the term “menstrual freedom.” We created an ideology to talk about going beyond accessing products. We want to address the root causes of why people don't have those products in the first place, whether it’s poverty, homelessness, misogyny, or transphobia. For example, in the prison industrial complex, a lot of incarcerated menstruators only get two pads in federal prison per month.

My heartbeat moment was when I checked #menstrualfreedom on Instagram and it had over 1,000 posts. It showed me that what we are doing is valuable, and it pushes us to discover what else menstruators need to have a dignified period.

Who is one person you’d love to give flowers to from your career that influenced your journey? What advice or lesson did you learn from them?

I’d like to give flowers to two people. First, my high school geometry teacher, Mr. Paul Buchanan. He told us that we needed to erase everything we ever learned about math and start over. It was the first time in my life that someone explained why things were the way they were, instead of giving me a formula to memorize. He made me fall in love with math and science. Growing up, I struggled with my mental health, and he was a constant support system for me. He always noticed when I wasn't doing well and took extra steps well beyond what was required of him as a high school teacher.

And second, my astronomy professor at the University of Oregon, Robert Scott Fisher. He was my mentor throughout undergrad and always showed up for me. After college, I had completed one of my internships at NASA and was giving a 5-minute presentation. He drove 2 hours to stand in the back and watch me present. There have been so many people who have been a part of the village that raised me. I learned from both of them to go the extra mile for people in your circle.

Where have you caused some good trouble in your career?

I’ve caused trouble across many fields. I’ve spoken about menstrual health in conferences, boardrooms, and in front of astronauts, and often as the only woman or person of color in the room. People have strict ideas about when it's "appropriate" to talk about periods. But progress doesn't come from protecting people's comfort. It comes from challenging what's been accepted for too long.

Want to nominate a leader you admire? You can do so here.

Vanessa Buenger of The Female Quotient weighs in:

Inheriting a team you didn't build is a common (and challenging) reality of management. You were put in this seat for a reason. The leadership at your organization believes that you have the vision to turn things around.

To manage that reset:

While you may have a daunting task ahead, it is not insurmountable. When you lead with transparency, empathy, and a willingness to listen, you will set an example. You can put your team in the best possible position to change their label and succeed.

P.S. Got a burning career question? Serve it up here to Dear FQ to score advice from a powerhouse leader in our network.

When you’re on a roll at work, you feel like nothing can stop you. Then you get a slack message, “Are you able to join this call?” Sound familiar?

For 36% of our community, the biggest obstacle to being productive is too many meetings. The kind that could have been an email. The kind that interrupts momentum without moving work forward. And executives agree: they estimate that 67% of meetings are a waste of time. And in just the U.S., they cost businesses an estimated $37 billion each year (insert flush noise here).

Close behind is lack of clarity (31%), a reminder that people can't execute well when priorities, expectations, or decision-making are unclear. The best organizations don't confuse being busy with progress. They replace unnecessary meetings with purposeful ones, prioritize clarity, and create space for focused work. Being busy isn't the goal; moving work forward is.

Now excuse us while we go be assertive.

Xo,

The FQ

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