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How big a “problem” is women’s overly tough behavior? Whereas
the majority of the men who go to the Growth and Leadership Center
are sent by their companies to learn how to delegate work or handle
stress better, a full 95 percent of the women are sent because their firms
say their coworkers find them scary. This doesn’t mean that the world
is suddenly being overrun by bitchy women. It means that an assertive
personal style can be a gender-norm violation for a woman. As the
psychologist Roberta Nutt, former chair of the Psychology of Women
Division of the American Psychological Association, noted, “When
women first entered the workplace they often tried to do things like
men, but it didn’t work. We don’t accept from women what we do
from men.”6 This is true of objectively aggressive and dominant types
of behavior, such as pointing at others, speaking with a stern expression
on one’s face, and making verbal and nonverbal threats.7 It is also true
of nonverbal behavior that could be seen to express a dominant attitude,
such as making a lot of eye contact while speaking.8 Sadly, it has even
been shown to be true of behavior that could be characterized as simply
assertive and self-confident, such as speaking without the use of dis-
claimers, tag questions (“don’t you agree?”), and hedges (“I’m not sure
this will work, but it might be worth trying”).9 It can be true of simply
disagreeing with another person as well—we accept this behavior from
a man much more readily than we do from a woman.10
Unfortunately, many of these behaviors can be effective in a negotia-
tion—but they carry risks for women. Marti, 28, who worked on sound
design for toys at a recording studio and is now the registrar of a theater
company and acting school, told us that she learned pretty early “that
if a woman picks that hard-edged negotiation style she can often . . .
come across as a bitch to people. And, still, I think, society looks at a
woman who is a successful businesswoman and a successful negotiator,
and somehow looks down upon her because she’s not as soft as she’s
supposed to be.”
Gender norms limit the behavior of men, too, of course: Men aren’t
free to cry or show weakness in most situations, for example. It isn’t,
therefore, just that women must be more concerned than men about
creating a good impression: It’s that particularly in the realm of negotiat-
ing, women’s behavior is more rigidly restricted than men’s. And an
extensive body of research has found clear evidence that when women
stray—or stride—across those boundaries they face penalties (what so-
cial scientists call “social sanctions”) for violating society’s expectations
for their behavior. These penalties can range from resentment for “act-
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ing like men”11 to a devaluing of their skills and job effectiveness12 to
outright hostility and censure.13 Their fear of these penalties makes
many women hesitate to pursue their goals too directly. It can also be
a major cause of anxiety for women when they need to negotiate on
their own behalf because they’ve learned that by doing so they risk
being punished in both subtle and overt ways. (Being sent to Bully
Broads would be one of the more overt ways, especially since many
women are told by their employers that if they don’t go they’ll lose their
jobs). As psychologist Mary Wade writes: “Women do not frequently
make requests for themselves, because they have learned that they may
ultimately lose more than they gain. . . . Women have learned their so-
cial normative lessons all too well.”14 Many women decide, in other
words, that the gains to be had from asking for what they want are not
worth the price they may have to pay.
In this chapter, we look broadly at society’s double standard for judg-
ing the behavior of men and women in order to understand why women
frequently feel punished for asking for what they want. We examine
some of the constraints society places on women’s behavior—con-
strategy for achieving their goals. We then look at ways for women to
ask for and get what they want without provoking hostile responses.
And we look at ways in which society can change to make “asking” by
women more permissible and effective.
The Likeability Factor
For women who want to influence other people, research has found
that being likeable is critically important—and that women’s influence increases the more they are liked. Since negotiation is all about trying
to influence people, this means that women must be likeable in order
to negotiate successfully. You might think that women also need to be
assertive to negotiate successfully—able to present strong arguments,
defend their interests and positions, and communicate confidence in
their points of view. Unfortunately, research has revealed that assertive
women are less well-liked than those who are not assertive.15 This
means that an assertive woman, no matter how well she presents her
arguments in a negotiation, risks decreasing her likeability and therefore
her ability to influence the other side to agree with her point of view.
In contrast, whether or not they are liked does not affect men’s ability
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to influence others, and there is no connection between assertive behav-
ior and likeability for men. Men are equally well liked whether they are
assertive or passive.16
This research is buttressed by studies showing that women are penal-
ized far more than men for boasting.17 In one study, researchers gave a
group of students a “boasting” statement and another group a “non-
boasting” statement. Some members of each group were told that the
statement they’d received had been made by a man and some were told
it had been made by a woman. They were all asked to rate the “likeabil-
ity” of the person who made their statement on a scale of one to seven.
The researchers found that the likeability of men fell when they boasted,
but that women’s likeability fell much further—42 percent more.18
The special pressure on women to be likeable can sometimes dis-
courage them from asking for anything at all. Adele, the retired financial
consultant, said she was raised to believe that being liked is of para-
mount importance for a woman. Afraid she would be disliked if she
pressed for what she wanted, she would “never negotiate for anything”
and taught herself to “ask for things very covertly.” Melissa, 39, a social
worker, said that in any type of negotiation, regardless of whom she’s
negotiating with, she’s likely to ask for less than she really wants because
her primary concern is for the other person to like her: “It sounds really
kind of silly, but I don’t want to ruin it somehow by being demanding
in some way. And not being liked is something that’s hard for me, and
so I
think that sometimes, if I feel like people are going to think, ‘Oh,
she’s demanding,’ I don’t know—it’s hard. Because . . . I want to fit into
what they want.”
The “likeability” issue can put women in a particularly tight bind,
because self-confidence, assertiveness, and asking directly for what you
want are often necessary to get ahead in the world. Consider, for exam-
ple, situations involving hiring and promotion decisions. Since research
has found that women are generally perceived to be less competent than
men, women who compete against men in job situations need to
counter this stereotype by demonstrating their superior capabilities.19
Self-promotion (describing one’s qualities and accomplishments) has
been shown to enhance people’s perceptions of one’s competence.20 But,
as the psychologist Laurie Rudman writes, “self-promotion poses special
problems for women.” Although self-promotion may educate a wom-
an’s superiors about her qualifications, it may make her less likeable—
and make her superiors less inclined to give her what she wants. As
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Rudman writes, “women may be stuck in a Catch-22 in which they are
damned if they do self-promote and damned if they do not.”21
Other studies have shown that men (and sometimes women) react
negatively when women adopt styles or communication patterns ex-
pected of men, such as acting assertive and self-confident rather than
tentative.22 But research also shows that women fare no better if they
don’t self-promote because men judge women who restrict themselves
to more gender-appropriate behavior as less capable and “unsuited to
management.”23
Marcela, 48, a nuclear engineer, described a supervisor who gave her
“feedback at a rating session that I was indecisive or too hesitant, which
I thought was complete bologna because I don’t see myself that way at
all and I don’t think that anybody else does either. That was just his
perception and it was definitely a male/female thing. We had completely
opposite styles of everything and I hated working for him, absolutely
hated it!” In other words, using more “feminine” styles or communica-
tion patterns often won’t get women what they want either, especially
when what they want is to be given management responsibilities and
the opportunity to rise into the higher levels of their organizations.24
Style and Prejudice
Recent research on leadership by Alice Eagly, Mona Makhijani, and
Bruce Klonsky confirms that we require different behavior from women
in leadership roles than we require from men: Men are judged to be
equally effective as leaders whether they use autocratic or democratic
leadership styles, but women who use autocratic styles are judged less
favorably than women who use democratic styles.25 Sadly, women man-
agers or “leaders” can be penalized for violating role expectations even
when they steer a careful course between the extremes of masculine
and feminine styles of behavior. In one study, researchers formed stu-
dents into groups of four to rank the value of nine items (such as a first-
aid kit and a map) to someone who has crashed on the moon. Each
group included a confederate of the researchers (either male or female)
who was trained to play the role of a cooperative, pleasantly assertive
group leader. As each group ranked the items, researchers observed the
facial expressions of the “nonconfederates” in response to the behavior
of the confederate leaders.
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The researchers found that the students responded very differently
to identical behavior by men and women. Males playing the leadership
roles elicited more positive than negative facial reactions but females
playing leadership roles prompted the opposite response—more nega-
tive than positive reactions. The researchers later asked the participants
to evaluate the personal attributes of the leaders in their groups. Across
the board, they rated males who had taken leadership positions as
having more ability, skill, and intelligence than the female leaders and
rated the females leaders as more emotional, bossy, and domineering—
this despite the fact that the behavior of the men and women playing
leadership roles was exactly the same. However, when the participants
were asked directly about their attitudes toward men and women in
leadership roles, they exhibited no sex biases and believed that they
held none.26
Researchers speculate that many people object to women playing
leadership roles because their ideas about leadership behavior clash
with their perceptions of how women should behave. To study this
phenomenon, in the 1970s the psychologist Virginia Schein developed
the Schein Descriptive Index, a list of 92 words and phrases commonly
used to describe people’s characteristics. Using this index, she looked
at the correspondences between the characteristics people attribute to
successful managers and the characteristics they attribute to men and
women. She found that people chose many more of the same words to
describe both men and managers (such as assertive and ambitious) but
very few of the same words to describe both women and managers.27
Later research in the 1980s reached much the same conclusions.28
More recently, in the mid and late 1990s, researchers noticed that
this correlation has begun to change for female subjects but not male
subjects—women have begun to see the characteristics of managers as
being similar to the characteristics of both men and women, while men
continue to see managers and women as dissimilar.29 A 1998 study
showed that males in particular continue to hold extremely negative
beliefs about females with senior professional standing. In this study, a
group of undergraduates was given the Schein Descriptive Index and
asked to identify words that describe female managers. Although female
subjects chose words and phrases such as able to separate feelings from
ideas, competent, creative, emotionally stable, helpful, intelligent, objective, self-controlled, sympathetic, and well-informed to describe female managers, male subjects chose terms such as bitter, deceitful, easily influenced, frivolous, hasty, nervous, passive, quarrelsome, and uncertain.30 Research 90
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in Germany, the United Kingdom, China, and Japan has produced simi-
lar results. In each of these very different cultures, men see a high corre-
spondence between the characteristics of men and the characteristics of
managers—and little to no correspondence between the characteristics
of women and the characteristics of managers.31
Taken together, these studies suggest that people’s prejudices can
powerfully influence the ways in which they respond to men and
women without their realizing it. People may observe that a woman
functions adequately or even extremely well according to objective mea-
sures—the number of billable hours she has worked or the number of
clients she has brought in or the amounts of
money she has raised—
and still conclude that she lacks desirable personal attributes (she’s not
as likeable, or she’s too emotional, bossy, and domineering, or she’s too
easily influenced, frivolous, and quarrelsome). This can be particularly
problematic in an era, like our own, in which CEOs often become celeb-
rities, as Rakesh Khurana, a professor of organizational behavior at the
Harvard Business School, wrote in Searching for a Corporate Savior: The
Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs. In this climate, writes Khurana, CEOs are “no longer defined as professional managers, but instead as
leaders,” with their ability to lead deriving largely from “their personal
characteristics, or, more simply, their charisma.”32 In an atmosphere in
which one’s “personal characteristics” (pretty vague criteria) qualify or
disqualify you for leadership roles, the subconscious prejudices people
hold about women and their lack of fitness for management roles can
translate into powerful deterrents when women ask to be considered
for leadership positions.
As the psychologist Madeline Heilman writes, “Even when she pro-
duces the identical product as a man, a woman’s work is often regarded
as inferior” because often “women’s achievements are viewed in a way
that is consistent with stereotype-based negative performance expecta-
tions, and their work is devalued simply because they are women.”33 A
woman may be told that she hasn’t been promoted for vague reasons—
she “needs more seasoning,” “just isn’t ready yet,” or “needs to be a
better team player.” The woman may suspect that she has been unfairly
evaluated, but because the criteria for evaluation are ambiguous, she
can’t prove it. She may conclude that something about her behavior has
put her in the wrong—and that what put her in the wrong was asking
to be promoted in the first place. This may make her reluctant to ac-
tively pursue advancement in the future.
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Double Trouble
Other research shows that responses to women may be especially dis-
torted by negative stereotypes when they work in areas in which there
are few other women. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in her influential 1977
book Men and Women of the Corporation, demonstrated that when
women are tokens (when there aren’t many of them around) their