Gender Communication Patterns

I once got feedback that I was “intimidating.” I took it to heart. I spent the next few years trying to be as approachable, warm, and agreeable as I could be. I assumed this was a character flaw that I needed to fix. But years later, I realized something: this feedback wasn’t about me. It was about the system - one that judges women more harshly and polices their personalities more than their performance. And the numbers back this up. 👇🏽 🎯 Women are 7x more likely to receive negative personality-based feedback than men. 🎯 56% of women have been called "unlikeable" in reviews (vs. 16% of men). 🎯 Harvard Business Review found that 76% of “aggressive” labels in one company’s reviews were given to women (vs. 24% to men). This Is the Leadership Double Bind: Speak up? You’re “too aggressive.” Stay quiet? You “lack confidence.” Show ambition? You’re “unlikeable.” Ask for a promotion? You’re “too pushy.” And here’s the kicker - it’s worst for high-performing women. This is why women... ↳  Hesitate to showcase ambition. ↳  Are reluctant to ask for opportunities. ↳  Are leaving workplaces faster than others. So, what can we do? Here are 3 ways we can start changing this narrative today: ✅ Check your language. Is the feedback about personality or performance? If you wouldn’t give the same critique to a man, please reconsider. ✅ Challenge vague feedback. “You need to be more confident” isn’t actionable. Women deserve the same clear, growth-oriented feedback as men. ✅ Support women’s ambition. If certain leadership traits (ex. being assertive) are seen as strengths in men, they should be seen as strengths in women too. Have you ever received unfair feedback? What’s one piece of feedback you’ve had to unlearn? 👇🏽 ♻️ Please share to help end unfair feedback. 🔔 Follow Bhavna Toor (She/Her) for more insights on conscious leadership. Source: Textio 'Language Bias in Feedback' Study, 2023 & 2024 #EndUnFairFeedback #IWD2025

WOMEN ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SILENT. ROMAN COLISEUM EVENTS ALIVE AND WELL At 57, with white hair and no carefully managed public image, Mary Beard appeared on a BBC panel to discuss immigration and politics. She answered questions, cited evidence, made her arguments—and went home. The next morning, her inbox was filled with rape threats, death threats, and attacks on her appearance, age, and voice. The abuse wasn't about debate. It was about punishing a woman for speaking with authority in public. Most people would have retreated. Beard went looking for the deeper pattern. A Cambridge classicist and one of the world's leading scholars of ancient Rome, she traced the hostility back through centuries of history and literature. In Homer's Odyssey, she found an early example: when Penelope speaks publicly, her son Telemachus orders her back to her room, declaring that speech is the business of men. For Beard, this wasn't ancient history—it was a blueprint. Across Western history, women who spoke with authority were dismissed, mocked, or excluded. In ancient Rome, women's public speech was treated as noise rather than argument. In the medieval period, women claiming authority were branded witches. Even Queen Elizabeth I had to frame herself in masculine terms to be accepted as a ruler. The pattern, Beard argued, is not accidental. For thousands of years, public authority has been defined in ways that exclude women. In Women & Power: A Manifesto (2017), she made a simple but powerful case: the problem is not that women lack the ability to lead. The problem is that traditional models of leadership were built by men and for men. When women don't fit those models, the fault is not theirs—the model was never designed to include them. The answer, Beard said, is not to teach women to imitate existing forms of power, but to rethink what power itself can look like. She continued teaching, writing, and appearing in public exactly as she was: knowledgeable, calm, and unapologetic. The abuse never fully stopped, but another response emerged. Women and girls wrote to tell her that her work helped them understand something important: they weren't failing to fit into the room. The room had been built without them in mind. That isn't a personal flaw. It's a historical design choice. By documenting that history and naming the pattern, Mary Beard gave people a way to see it—and challenge it. Telemachus claimed that speech was the business of men. Three thousand years later, Mary Beard has shown why he was wrong. https://lnkd.in/ewkSPpHS

More ‘Masculine Energy’ you say? Hmmm....this same energy that men are taught to brandish, unapologetically and with pride, becomes a weapon turned inward when a woman dares to wield it. The workplace, built on structures that celebrate dominance, decisiveness, and control, claims to value these traits universally, but is that true for women? Research tells us, over and over, that women who embody “masculine energy” are seen as competent but cold, ambitious but abrasive, successful but unlikable. They are punished for the same qualities that elevate their male counterparts. What Zuckerberg calls for, a celebration of aggression, sits comfortably in the mouths of men who have always been allowed to speak it. For women, aggression is an offense to an unspoken contract: you may be present, but you must not be too much. Assertive women are consistently penalized in evaluations of likability and influence. We know this, and yet the narrative persists that to succeed, women must channel this masculine energy. But success in these terms comes at a cost. It is to exist as a contradiction, a body both defiant and disciplined, always apologizing for taking up space. https://lnkd.in/gUbw9rtR

“Be more assertive” is the most misleading advice women get: Not because it’s wrong. Because it’s incomplete. I see this pattern constantly in coaching. A woman is told she needs to be more assertive. She challenges an idea in a meeting. She pushes back directly. And then she gets feedback like this: “He doesn’t like being challenged. He prefers I not do it in the meeting.” So she adapts. – She doesn’t say no. – She doesn’t say a big yes either. – She says, “Let me go think on it.” Not because she lacks confidence. Because she’s learned where the penalty lives. Another client put it even more plainly: “Before, I would have jumped in and said something with passion. This time, I stopped myself. I pulled back and delivered it with warmth.” That’s not a personality issue. That’s not imposter syndrome. That’s pattern recognition. Women learn quickly that the same behaviors are read differently. So they start managing reactions instead of just sharing ideas. From the outside, it can look like a confidence gap. From the inside, it’s strategic restraint. The women who actually succeed long-term don’t become less assertive. They shift their style to read the audience. One client told me she started going into meetings with a simple intention: “Be clear and warm. These are executive presence opportunities.” She didn’t get quieter. She got more deliberate. Clear and warm. Direct and human. That’s the difference most advice misses. Women don’t need louder scripts. They need strategies that account for reality. The framework in the graphic explains why this happens. The harder question is what to do once you see it. – How do you stay influential without shrinking? – How do you be direct without triggering backlash? – How do you step off the likability trap entirely? I go deep on that in this week’s podcast episode on the likability trap. Not theory. Practical moves women actually use to lead without paying unnecessary social tax. If this post hits close to home, listen to that episode next. It’s the part most advice skips. Link is in the comments. 👇 🔔 And if you want more leadership thinking grounded in how rooms really work, follow me, Jill Avey.

Confidence is praised until it becomes inconvenient. I can’t tell you how many women I’ve spoken to who were told to be more confident. They took the feedback seriously. They started speaking up. Taking space and owning their accomplishments out loud. But the moment their confidence made someone uncomfortable, the tone of the feedback changed. Now they were “too direct.” “Too full of themselves.” “Too much.” I have heard this myself a few times throughout my career when I made that shift. What’s confusing and exhausting is how invisible the line is. You’re expected to be confident… but not arrogant. Assertive… but not abrasive. Vocal… but not dominating. Ambitious… but only if it doesn’t disrupt anything. Where is the middle ground and where is the line between “not enough” and “too much”? I'm really keen to hear your thoughts on this one; I am sure it hits home with many of you. I've heard stories from women at all levels, from individual contributors to senior leaders, who felt like their confidence had to be carefully managed, softened, or scaled depending on the room they were in. It begs the question: → Is confidence only safe once you’ve earned a certain title? → Do we actually want confident voices or just convenient ones? → And how many women are holding back right now, not because they lack confidence, but because they’re tired of being penalized for it? This isn’t about blaming individuals. It’s about recognizing that the environment often sends mixed messages and those messages shape how women show up at work. Confidence shouldn’t be a trap. It should be something that’s welcomed, encouraged, and respected even when it challenges the status quo. #confidence #leadership #womenatwork #businesswomen

“No, I’m speaking.” She had to say it nine times just to finish her sentence. I saw this clip, and it stayed with me. Not because of who was “right” or “wrong.” But because of how many times she had to repeat herself just to be heard. Nine. Times. This is what thousands of women face in the corporate world every single day: → Women are interrupted 33% more often than men, and 46% more often in mixed-gender groups. → In meetings, men hold the floor 75% of the time, even when women are the majority. At my last organization, this was the #1 issue women brought to my attention - how often they were interrupted or spoken over, no matter their role or level. Watching her say “I’m speaking” brought me back to all the times I had to stand my ground. Knowing the labels would follow: “abrasive,” “intimidating.” And I know I’m not alone. Every woman has felt that moment, the battle just to finish a thought. The comments were telling too: one even said her mic should have been turned off. That’s how the system responds to bold women. It doesn’t just ignore them; it silences them. And silencing women has real consequences. When voices are shut out, so are decisions, opportunities, and influence. Leadership isn’t about being the loudest in the room. It’s about making space for every voice to be heard, especially the ones that challenge your own. For women navigating this, a few strategies I’ve seen work: → Hold your ground. Calmly restate, “I’d like to finish my thought,” until space is given. → Use allies: ask a trusted colleague to redirect the floor back to you if interrupted. → Open with a key point so your voice is anchored in the discussion. → Support & amplify other women’s ideas so they’re not dismissed. To every woman reading this: Keep speaking. Even if you have to say it nine times. 💬 Have you ever had to say “I’m speaking” just to be heard? I’d love to know how you handled it. 💌 Click on the link in the comments to join my newsletter

IF SPEAKING UP COSTS YOU CREDIBILITY, YOU STOP TALKING. McKinsey just put data to something women always understood without a chart. As women move up, they don’t feel more empowered to speak. They feel less safe. Less safe to disagree. Less safe to take risks. Less safe to make mistakes out loud. Not because confidence disappeared. Because experience showed them the cost. Let’s be very clear about what the data is pointing to: Women aren’t quieter because they lack a voice. They’re quieter because they’re paying attention. They’ve learned that: + their mistakes linger longer + their dissent gets labeled “difficult” + their risk taking is scrutinized instead of celebrated So silence becomes strategy. Not weakness. Not insecurity. A rational response to an uneven system. Here’s the leadership blind spot no one wants to own: When women don’t feel safe taking risks, you don’t get innovation. When women don’t feel safe disagreeing, you don’t get truth. When women stop speaking up, you don’t lose noise, you lose insight. Psychological safety isn’t a perk. And it sure as hell isn’t gender neutral if the consequences aren’t. Fair, equitable psychological safety is the entry fee for honest leadership. Anything less is just asking women to be brave in a system that punishes them for it.

Leadership tests everyone. But it tests women differently. I had an experience that forced me to take a closer look at why. A male colleague had been creating a hostile environment. Speaking negatively about me to employees. Undermining my credibility. The kind of behavior every leader eventually has to address. So I did what leaders are supposed to do. I stayed calm and professional. I confronted the issue head on. The conversation with my colleague went well. He apologized. We moved forward. What happened next is what stayed with me. Instead of recognizing that I handled a difficult situation with maturity, the CEO, who was also present, redirected the conversation to feedback about me. He shared that this colleague viewed me as a know it all. Not because of my performance, but because in meetings I speak confidently and bring my expertise. So I asked a simple question. Is this a real behavior issue or is this a perception issue? That is when the CEO admitted something I was both appreciative of and deeply unsettled by. He said the perception existed partly because I am a woman in a room full of men. Hearing that out loud was a moment of clarity. Not because it was surprising, but because it was normalized. Acknowledged as if it were simply the cost of being the only woman at the table. Something I just had to work around. Meanwhile, those same rooms include men who raise voices, interrupt, roll their eyes, or derail conversations. Yet none of them walk out labeled as know it alls. This is the double standard women in leadership carry. If you speak up, you are too much. If you don’t, you are not enough. If you take initiative, you are difficult. If you stay quiet, you are disengaged. Leadership requires using your judgment. Bringing your expertise. Addressing issues directly. Having a voice. If a woman doing those things earns a negative label, that is NOT about her. That is about the culture around her. I will always reflect. I will always grow. But I will not shrink to make others more comfortable. Confident women are not the problem. Systems that punish confident women are. So I keep coming back to one question. If a woman knows her work, uses her expertise, and leads with professionalism, is that being a know it all or is that simply leadership? Because the answer says more about the organization than it does about her. What are you thoughts?