As one of the only women at work, I used to dread performance review time, especially at year-end. Although I was supposed to know what to expect, it was most often a somewhat unclear, hence stressful experience. However, the more I’ve grown personally and professionally, I’ve learned there is so much more to performance reviews than meets the eye, especially for women. The reality is, performance reviews are riddled with gender biases. Being aware of and understanding these can help in proactively addressing and dismantling these.
Here are 4 types of gender biases to look out for as a woman at work:
Language bias
Research shows there exists a language bias to performance reviews. Stanford Graduate School of Business professor of organizational behavior Shelley J. Correll co-authored a 2020 study which coded the performance review language used by employees at a Fortune 500 company. The study found that based on the gender of the employee, managers tend to perceive the same or similar behaviors differently. This is akin to “gender policing” whereby women are judged differently for engaging in the same behavior as men, experiencing a backlash when they do not fall within gender norms. More specifically, significant biases were found in the evaluations of people’s personalities, potential and exceptionalism. This is mostly due to ill-defined performance review protocols and processes which give way to this bias.
Visibility Bias
Due to innate gender differences between men and women, women are more apt to favor skills such as communication and collaboration than men. Women may spend more time and effort on less visible tasks, such as organizing team events or ensuring team cohesion. Linked In’s 2023 report on global differences in skills shows women hold more soft skills than men, at a rate of 13.6% for women vs. 10.6% of skills for men. Men on the other hand, also due to these innate gender differences, may focus on more income-earning skills, which may be applied in more visible roles. Data shows higher shares of disruptive tech skills for men than women, for instance. These may include tasks such as leading meetings or speaking at conferences.
Because highly visible tasks are easier to measure and quantify in terms of organizational impact and benefit, they tend to rank higher on performance evaluations. Meanwhile, less visible ones may fall to the bottom of the performance evaluation scale. Much of this lends itself to a dangerous bias, and is mostly due to the lack of or poor setting of individualized goals.
Proximity bias
If you’ve ever been in a team setting, you may have noted this bias. The proximity bias favors people who are in proximity, as it is assumed that those in close proximity do more work or more important work. This is especially relevant since the pandemic as remote work appears to help keep more women, especially working moms, in the work force. According to a 2023 Hamilton Project Report, 70.4% of moms with kids under the age of 5 were in the workforce, which constitutes an all-time high record.
However, as more working women and moms may work remotely, they may also fall victim to this proximity bias. Not being present in the office as much as their male counterparts, who may benefit from their partners’ support at home, may penalize women and moms at a larger scale.
Ingroup Bias
Ingroup bias is the tendency to favor those who are members of one’s groups over those who may be perceived as not belonging. This may particularly impact working women and moms who may not be seen as belonging to male-dominated industries, companies or groups. This can also significantly affect women and moms working remotely.
While both men and women can be victims of this bias, women may be more at risk due to the already existing gender biases against women. As men tend to be seen more as leaders, they may indirectly benefit from this.
Recognizing and addressing these biases is crucial in improving the outcome of performance reviews. Some ways to address these include, but may not be limited to, improving the performance review process and protocols, educating managers on these biases, and proactively seeking more actionable feedback.
Have you encountered any of these performance review biases as a woman at work?
The letter came in the mail a couple of days before I even got a chance to open it. It was a routine mammogram I thought nothing of, like most of the other mammograms I had done before. Except this one was a tad different…
The word “abnormal” jumped at me from the page, obscuring the remainder of the letter. I was being called in for a diagnostic mammogram due to an abnormality in one of my breasts. My heart dropped, my mind started racing, the ground suddenly did not feel as quite as firm…I grabbed my phone and started googling “abnormal mammogram”. The results were dizzying in their abundance and gravity…I felt around for the closest chair and sat down…
If you’ve ever received a similar or the same letter or phone call alerting you of a mammogram abnormality, you may well understand how I felt. The gut-wrenching feeling, the drop in your chest, the wobble in your shaky legs…
While abnormal mammogram notifications can be associated with numerous factors, a prevalent one for women over 40 is breast density. It certainly was in my case, and is in that of countless women.
But first what is even breast density?
Dense breasts are simply breasts that have more breast and connective tissue, which is denser than fat. Figure 1 below illustrates various levels of breast density.
Figure 1.
According to the Susan G. Komen website, “about 50 to 60% of women over the age of 40 in the United States have dense breasts”. These statistics decrease significantly for women ages 70-74, with only 20 to 30% of the latter exhibiting signs of breast density. It’s important to note that breast density is not based on weight, as 50 to 60% of women with healthy weights also have dense breasts, in contrast to 20 to 30% of obese women. Breast density can be affected by medications containing hormones, such as menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) and breast cancer treatment medication tamoxifen.
Why does breast density matter so much when it comes to breast cancer?
Due to the heightened breast cancer risk associated with breast density, it is recommended to supplement routine mammograms with additional screenings such as ultrasounds. However, there are yet no specific screening guidelines or recommendations for additional screenings. Lowering breast density also doesn’t necessarily result in the risk of breast cancer decreasing.
So the next time you receive a notification letter after a mammogram, please check for the included breast density assessment. Make sure to speak to your provider about additional screening options and ways of lowering the risk of breast cancer. Most importantly, and while it’s easier said than done, do not panic! Most women with dense breasts end up having to undergo additional breast screenings to rule out any abnormalities.
As for me, going through additional diagnostic screening allowed me to learn and share more information around breast density. As I thank God that all is well, I’m also fully aware that every day is a blessing, and that this fight against breast cancer is our collective fight.
Have you ever wondered how you can advance your career while being a woman, wife and/or mother, and not having to work 40+ hours every week? Have you ever considered cloning yourself so you could do all the things, everywhere at the same time? You’re certainly not the only one. As a working woman and mom, managing your career for growth and advancement, while dedicating the astronomical time society has made us believe is required for it, often seems to fall under the “mission impossible” category. Or at least under one that is far from being sustainable in the long term…
As a result, working women often feel powerless in the face of the many professional and personal challenges facing them as they move forward in our careers. This is only made worse by the plethora of gender biases they encounter in the workplace. What happens next, or even simultaneously, can sadly be summarized as ranks of working women stuck in lower levels of management (when they reach management at all), or exiting the professional stage altogether. This is also known as the “broken rung” , or the phenomenon of women being stuck between entry-level and management positions, which McKinsey’s 2023 Women in the Workplace report identifies as the most significant hurdle on women’s path to senior leadership.
Like so many other women, this is an all-too-common ordeal I wish I weren’t as familiar with. Through my various seasons of womanhood, from early career, motherhood, to mid-career and through my transition into academia, I’ve endlessly wondered how women can possibly build a sustainable career without sacrificing family, sanity and the rest of life.
Well, long after the seeds of this deeply personal yet undeniably collective question began sprouting in my early and mid-career mind, I stumbled upon a career awakening of sorts through the world of academia. While careers in academia are split between research, teaching and service, the true currency of advancement in the academic world is published research work. Which means despite all the various windows of opportunities, urgent and important work in the academic world, academics, and especially women academics, must prioritize their research work. This is even more important for women in the patriarchal academic system, who most often do not benefit from the same expanses of available time than their male counterparts due to personal, service and other responsibilities. Hence the need for women academics, like most other career women, to create the systems necessary for their survival and ultimately, their professional thriving.
It’s in this context that I stumbled upon one of my favorite podcasts entitled “Academic Writing Amplified” by Cathy Mazak, which focuses on helping women in the professorate write and publish more without succumbing to the false notion that they must work around the clock to do so. The advice in this podcast has inspired me to share these three steps to building a sustainable career as working women and moms across industries and fields of work:
Determine what moves the needle in your career
In careers that are more than ever fraught with demands of all kinds, from unending meetings to email apocalypses, seeing the forest from the trees can near mission impossible. Hence why so many of us have been conditioned to believe professional success requires ungodly schedules and unfathomable personal sacrifices. Yet, what if the real problem hid in the professional confusion that constant communication and nagging technology have created over the years?
This is where taking a step back and reflecting on what moves the needle in your career makes a difference. What are the areas of your career that are instrumental to your advancement and growth? What weighs the heaviest when it comes to your upcoming promotion? What has the most long-term impact on your career? Those are the areas where the bulk of your focus, time and energy should be directed. If you’re not clear on what these are, going back to your job description, last performance review, or having a check-in with your managers and peers may help.
Build your schedule around what moves the needle in your career
Identifying the area(s) that move the needle in your career is the first step to building a sustainable career. The next step is putting action behind this, by re-evaluating and re-building your schedule around those areas. When you look at your current schedule, where does the bulk of your time go? Do you spend most of your time on emails and meetings? Is most of your schedule revolving around areas that are not advancing important projects or helping you meet crucial goals?
Very often, when we make an inventory of how we spend our time at work, we unfortunately realize that we’re majoring in minors. Much of our time is often spent on urgent, yet not important activities. Do you want to be known for how fast you answer emails, or for the impactful goals you are achieving? I would bet the latter… If so, consider rebuilding your schedule to prioritize the projects, activities and goals that move your career forward.
Implement habits and systems that help you keep the main thing the main thing
Last but not least, building the systems and habits to prioritize the pivotal areas of your career is key. In her podcast entitled “Academic Writing Amplified” aimed at helping women in academia write research more, author and entrepreneur Cathy Mazak talks about identifying your “tiger time” or “soar time”. This is your most productive, less distracted time of day, that can allow you to tackle your most important work in the most effective way. What is your “tiger time” or “soar time”?
Once you can consistently identify and use your most productive time for your most impactful work, then you can relegate other less important activities to other parts of your day. Are you used to checking your email first thing in the morning, and letting it eat most of your time? Schedule a later time in the day to open your inbox and set a time limit for email-related activities. Are meetings overwhelming your schedule and preventing you from focusing on important projects? Consider blocking your calendar, saying “no” more often, and offering more suitable time alternatives.
All in all, building a more sustainable career as a working woman and mom comes down to an exercise in clarity and habit-building. From reflecting on what is truly impactful in your career, to building your schedule around pivotal activities at work, and finally implementing habits and systems to prioritize the latter, it’s a process. Yet, it is one that can make a world of difference between majoring in minors and endlessly sacrificing at the altar of career sainthood to no avail, and effectively saving time and energy to zoom in on what really matters.
This episode is a summer recap for my working women and moms, looking back at the reality of the summer mental load, the power of doing nothing at all (yes, it’s possible!), and how to make our careers hot again in the summer months (without sacrificing our summer fun in the process).
Listen in!
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It’s the middle of summer, and I am trying out a new African restaurant with a colleague and a new professional acquaintance while nerding out on artificial intelligence during a work conference. Here I was, actually enjoying myself and advancing my career, while building in some fun and networking along the way. I also happened to meet other working women and moms, who brought their family and kids along, combining family time with career enrichment. But wait, is it actually possible to enrich your career in the summer, while still making time for family time and fun? To my own recent surprise, I have to say it is…
If you have ever wondered if the summer months are not exactly as valuable as the rest of the year in terms of career growth, you’re far from being the only one. For many of us, especially as working women and moms, summer can seem too slow professionally and too busy personally to really push our careers forward. It may even seem as if in terms of career advancement, the summer months may be partially, or even worse, totally wasted.
Yet, while summer is frequently a time of slowing down at work, especially for working parents as school is out for a few months, it can also be a great time to refresh and revitalize your career. As an ex-corporate girl who’s reconverted in academia, summer has gone from being a slower, somewhat aimless time at work, to being a strategic time for my career without necessarily taking away the “fun” of summer.
Here are 10 effective, yet enjoyable ways to revitalize your career in the summer, without sacrificing your summer fun:
Set A Vision for Your Career in the Summer
For many years, I did not even think of setting career goals for the summer months. Without setting a vision for these months, they ended up being aimless and directionless, even despite getting work done.
Setting summer career goals has allowed me to set a vision for these few months, and have a sense of purpose and motivation throughout. Some of my usual summer career goals include some enjoyable networking and learning, rest, (yes, rest!), traveling, and working on a flexible schedule.
Look into Flexible Work Opportunities:
Speaking of flexible schedule, being able to have flexibility in the summer has been a game, and career changer for me. As a working mom with my kids at home during the summer, not to mention travel and vacation plans, being able to build my own schedule goes a long way.
This is where exploring flexible schedule and/or work opportunities comes in handy during the summer months. This also requires planning ahead if flexibility is not already built into your schedule.
Have a Self-Care Plan
My summers are sacred, and part of the sacredness, other than the fact that I’m a summer baby (hello July babies), is the slower pace that favors more self-care. As a mom, not having to drop off the kids at school every morning, and being able to work on a flexible schedule, opens up the possibility of integrating more self-care in my daily routine.
Whether it’s brunch with the girls, or an early morning walk, or a more consistent exercise routine, making a self-care plan you can stick to is key. Often, this also allows to adopt and keep new self-care habits that can become part of our lifestyle.
Develop and Refine your Personal Brand Vision
One of the advantages of summer’s slower pace is the space to think! One of the aspects of my career and business that I take the time to revisit in the summer is my personal brand. Your personal brand defines how you are perceived, and what sets you apart in your field or discipline.
Taking the time during the slower months of summer to think about this can also help you develop your personal brand statement; which comes in handy when it’s time to clarify your career goals, or network more effectively.
Switch up your networking:
Speaking of networking, summer can be an ideal time to network more effectively, and probably, more enjoyably. As the slower pace of work may allow for a more relaxed perspective and lessened stakes as well, it can be a great time to attend industry conferences or seminars.
I’ve fallen in love with work conferences during the summer months. As many conferences encourage attendees to bring their families along, they can be a perfect opportunity to combine work and family time. During the slower summer weeks, they can also be a nice change of pace and an opportunity to experience new places and meet new people.
Build up your skills in an enjoyable way:
I know, I know, who wants to build up skills during the summer when all you want is lay on the beach and catch a break? That’s what I thought until I considered more enjoyable ways of learning during the summer months.
One of the most enjoyable ways for me to learn and build up skills is through books. Summer reading is one of my absolute favorites. Podcasting, books, informal learning are also enjoyable ways to build up your skills.
Refresh your workspace
Last but not least, while you’re on a summer refresh mood, why not use it to refresh your workspace? I love taking this slower time to declutter, redecorate and spruce up my workspace with less work pressure. As a mom, this is also something I can involve the kids in (or use as a formative summer experience or family activity).
As a working woman and mom, while the summer months can be especially busy (hello summer ceiling for working moms), they can also make for a great opportunity to enrich our careers. From setting a vision, to having a self-care plan and networking, we can turn this time into a breath of fresh work air.
It is often said that moms make great leaders, probably the best leaders. The invaluable, often innate skills that come from motherhood, from intuition, to organization and effective team management, are also described as main leadership qualities; qualities which should logically translate well from the home to the office and vice-versa. Yet, I remember asking myself, in the middle of a rather heated exchange with my teenagers on a random Tuesday while trying to process the next batch of laundry and remembering the appointments of the day, how much of this holds true in my own experience. If motherhood makes for great leaders, does effective leadership translate into effective motherhood and vice-versa, crossing from the office to the home?
I grew up with a single mother who worked in and outside of the home. In stark contrast to the images of leadership I was exposed to through both my academic and my professional journey, where leadership was mostly male, my first image of leadership was female. It is not until years later as a working mother myself, that I began grappling with the concept of leadership and what it means for working women and moms at the intersection of work and home…
Despite the common traditional assumption that men are the leaders of the home, much of the home’s “silent” leadership is actually carried by women, whether they work exclusively in the home, or both in and outside of the home. As a matter of fact, the “silent” but oh so meaningful contributions of women make up $7.6 trillion of the Unites States’ annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Unpaid labor is defined by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as “non-compensated time spent completing domestic tasks such as caring for children, the elderly, or other household or non-household members, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and shopping for household goods, among others.”
Yet, what is not often talked about is what happens at the intersection of leadership at work and home for working mothers. How do we, as working moms, carry this leadership in our homes? How do we defy traditional norms that do not recognize us as leaders, in or outside the home? And how do we transition from leadership at work to leadership at home?
Let me preface by saying I strongly believe leadership, especially for women, is an innate skill, an ability that ought to be developed and nurtured internally first, rather than acquired and developed from the outside. This is why so many leadership trainings for women often fail to produce authentic and sustainable results. Instead of targeting the development of innate leadership qualities that already exist in women, they tend to focus on imprinting externally developed, and traditional patriarchal ideas of leadership. What these programs unsuccessfully attempt to do then, is to erroneously fix the outside, forgetting about the importance of authentically working from the inside first. Now imagine these same patriarchal models of leadership being brought back in the home, perpetuating a flagrant lack of alignment and authenticity in the process of raising children and running households…
As a working mom and career woman, I tried bringing back home this patriarchal model of leadership, based on so-called effective ways of leading ranging from assertiveness to even aggressiveness at times. And…need I say it did not work, and especially not with children, never mind rebellious teenagers…Children, as well as teenagers, can sense lack of authenticity from a mile away. While I observed our children effectively responding to my husband’s unique and very personal leadership style, I could plainly see they were not responding as well to my own professionally imported style of leading…This prompted me to continue exploring what leadership means for women at the intersection of work and home. This exploration has led me to these three principles that have helped me ease the confusion between traditional leadership, mostly applied at work, and leadership at home, and tie both into an approach to leadership for working moms:
Develop one uniform leadership identity across work and home:
What kind of leader am I? How do I lead, not just in the workplace, but everywhere where I can have an impact? And how can I ensure my leadership remains authentic while still acting for the greater good?
I believe leadership is intrinsically tied to the very core of our beings. Who you are when no one is looking is who you are as a leader. I struggled with this for a long time, especially as a woman building a career in mostly male-dominated environments. I’m a quiet leader, so my style of leadership is not exactly aligned with the most mainstream and popular ideas of leadership either.
Reconciling my various identities as a Black woman, a professional and an introvert into one uniform leadership identity has been (and still is) a journey. One that is a precious opportunity to know myself better and evolve with the various seasons of my life; but also one that allows me to dig deeper into what my authentic style of leadership is.
No leadership battles! Create a multi-leadership environment
Am I the leader or is my husband the leader? If he is the leader, how can I lead? Should I even be thinking of leading?
As a woman raised in a single-parent, female-led home, in a traditionally patriarchal West African society in the Catholic faith, these questions were bound to cross my mind. Men are supposed to be the leaders in the home. Then how do we introduce the concept of leading as women? Yet, if we do not contribute to the leadership of our homes, then what are we doing? And if we’re learning to lead outside the home, do we just leave all that at the door when we get home?
I believe we are all leaders in our own capacity and in various roles. While we cannot all lead in the same areas at the same time, we can take various leadership roles at different times. What this means may vary from one marriage or family to another. But the fact remains that leadership can be shared, with various levels of responsibility and accountability being put in place between partners but also between partners and children.
Be flexible in your approach to leadership
As a working woman and mom, I know seasons of life and work rapidly change. What worked yesterday may not work today, and vice-versa. Learning to be flexible has been a key in my own growth and development as a leader in my own life and work. Being willing to gauge and re-evaluate my own sense of leadership, taking into account feedback from others, and forgiving myself in the process, has allowed me to continue to be true to myself.
Flexibility in how we approach and apply leadership at home and at work will allow you to adjust as you pursue your own leadership journey. It will also allow you to navigate the various, and inevitable, phases of life and work ahead, while authentically leading as yourself, from your very core.
For working women and moms, reconciling how to lead at home and how to lead at work, can create a world of confusion. By developing one uniform approach to leadership, sharing leadership at home, and allowing flexibility in the process, the journey can be made much easier, and most importantly, much more authentic and purposeful…
How do you reconcile leading at home and leading at work?
This is a question I often asked myself coming up in my own career. As a young Black woman and immigrant starting my career in corporate America, leadership was hardly ever mentioned around me. After all, I felt lucky enough and happy to have “snatched” a job after college…Just having a seat at the table, any table of any significance, felt enough of a privilege…
Fast-forward many career ups and downs, a full career transition into academia, and my under-developed views on leadership have quite significantly morphed. What I realized along my journey is that given the opportunity and space to do so, women can not only bring their own, intrinsic leadership to the table of their careers, but they can also develop it in ways that are truly authentic to them and hence more effective and powerful overall.
Yet, it has taken me a long time to even begin to think of myself as a leader. Leadership was not exactly one of the topics discussed around the dinner table in my single-parent home growing up in Senegal, a majority Muslim country where the majority of leaders were (and still are) men. However, I had the privilege of seeing my mother as the leader of our matriarchal household. Without realizing it then, I was already being primed to seeing women as leaders. Yet, I was not prepared to act on this image of leadership…
It’s not until now, decades later, that I started asking myself the question” “What does it mean to lead as a woman in a patriarchal society struggling to move beyond gender bias and barriers?”
Does it mean breaking the glass ceiling, or the concrete ceiling or wall for Black women, or the bamboo ceiling for Asian women? Does it mean ascending to the highest levels of one’s career? Does it even mean being recognized for your work? Is that leadership for women? Or is it merely the reflection of leadership we’ve received from the remnants of a patriarchal society we’re still holding on a feeble, yet sustained pedestal?
What is leadership, authentic leadership for women? What does it mean to lead in your own life, in an authentic, compelling manner? When I think of all the outer signs of career success and leadership, and the paradox it creates in so many women’s lives, pitting them against their own personal choices and sense of balance, I tend to ask: “But…is that leadership?” Or is it just about reaching an ideal that has not been set by women or for women?
Leadership as we know it, is not made for women. This is why so many leadership programs targeted at women, fail miserably. This is why as much as some companies are investing in women empowerment programs, they are not seeing expected returns. It is because the very foundation of leadership as we know it, is not adapted to working women and moms. This is what has been defined as the “second generation bias” largely explaining women’s under-representation in leadership roles, due to cultural assumptions and organizational structures reinforcing the lack of women role models, gendered work favoring and rewarding men, lack of network and sponsor access for women, and the mismatch between traditionally feminine qualities and leadership qualities.
In order to be a leader, you have to see yourself as a leader. In the absence of women leaders, and the absence or scarcity of leadership values that align with the reality of women’s lives and values, how can leadership as we know it be effective for and to women? How can women really lead, effectively and powerfully, in systems whose foundations were never made for them? Here are three ways that may help:
Revisit your beliefs about leadership
What are your personal beliefs about leadership? How have they been shaped in the course of your life? Do you even see yourself as a leader?
These are a few questions that started my own leadership journey, and may also help begin or continue yours. Oftentime as women in general, we may not see ourselves as leaders because we have not been exposed to leaders who look, think or act like us. Leadership is after all, very much a gendered and patriarchal concept, which has been modeled after men for the longest time. Only in recent years, have we begun seeing women leaders in various areas, from politics to business.
Similarly, the models of leadership we’ve grown up with have most often reflected the patriarchal society we live in. Despite the increasing presence of women leaders, and all the benefits associated with women in leadership position, this foundational model has not evolved much. This has in turn literally forced women to conform to a way of leadership often not in alignment with them, holding on to the belief that there is no other way to lead.
This is where revisiting your beliefs about leadership may help in changing how you view leadership, and start reframing leadership in a way that serves your values, purpose and principles.
Revisit the foundations of leadership in the organizations you’re a part of
In the same way, organizations, companies and businesses’ foundations of leadership have been modeled after patriarchal models. In most modern organizations, women are not seen as leaders, even when they hold a leadership position or title because men have been the leadership norm and default for so long. This is why so many leadership programs targeted at increasing the number of women leaders in organizations fail miserably. Leadership is deeper than just reaching a certain title or position, it’s about embodying the role of leader which requires seeing oneself and being seen as one.
This is where organizations must strive to identify , acknowledge and address what they define as leadership. In the process, they must seek to educate, empower, and steer their people toward a more diverse and inclusive concept of leadership.
Redefine your own brand of leadership as a working woman and mom
Because leadership has been modeled after men, and too many women have in one way or another adopted styles of leadership not aligned with their values or purpose, leadership has revolved around how it looks for too long. What if instead, each and every one of us started asking ourselves the question: “What is my own way of leading?”
Being an authentic leader means acting in alignment with one’s values and purpose. As a working woman and mother, it means leading myself, leading in my home as a mom and wife, and leading in the workplace in my capacity. To me, it means leading with compassion, with integrity, and openness.
What does it mean to you?
So all in all, can I really, truly and authentically lead as a woman?
As I write these words, the answer is: It depends. It depends on how I reframe and redefine leadership as a working woman and mom; but it also depends on the spaces in which I can fully lead, in integrity and authenticity. There is much work to be done on both sides, yet the prospect of a future where women can lead as themselves is worth it…
