Why are women penalized for competence?
A brief introduction to patriarchy and how it harms us all
“You’re just being really strong right now.”
“You come across as intimidating.”
“You’re too ambitious.”
“Maybe you could talk less about your achievements. It makes your colleagues feel bad.”
At a recent gathering for female professors, I sat in a circle with nine women during lunch. I brought up a story we’d heard earlier from a colleague. When she was turned down for a promotion that went instead to a male colleague, she had asked why. A supervisor told her, “You’re too strategic and qualified.” I asked if anyone else at the table had received similar criticisms for signs of competence. Everyone at the table had stories. I took notes for over an hour, filling one notebook page and then another.
The list included the statements above in which women were told, in essence, that their competence was a detriment to their organization. Other times they were presumed not to have competence at all. Many had students or supervisors say, with a tone of surprise, “You’re actually really qualified.” Others discovered that their colleagues assumed they were “diversity hires,” chosen over of white male candidates despite lower qualifications.
Many told stories of having their “Dr.” before their name dropped. Having her “Dr.” name tag handed to a male spouse instead of her at a college event. Having a student muse, “Oh, you’re married to a man with a Ph.D.—so that’s why you go by Dr.” Finding herself referred to in meeting minutes by first name while every male colleague had “Dr.” before their surname. (Research attests that female medical doctors, too, are more than twice as likely to be addressed by first names than male doctors.)
Sometimes clothing became a site for scolding. “Stop dressing so casually. People won’t be able to tell you apart from students,” a female colleague was told in a department where male a colleague regularly came to work in a hoodie. His maleness, even in workout gear, was seen as enough to distinguish him from students, while her femaleness was read as immaturity. Another colleague heard the opposite: “Stop wearing red lipstick. It’s too intimidating.” Be dressy enough to prove you deserve your job, but not so dressy that you look powerful in it.
There’s a pattern here that extends further than that table of colleagues. Women aren’t expected to be competent, and when they are, it’s viewed as a problem.
What’s going on here?
At first glance, this might seem like just a case of stereotyping. Stereotypes can arise whenever people fixate on certain perceived differences between groups, and while stereotypes inflict harm by flattening human complexity, they do not necessarily signal that one group is considered inherently better or worse. “Women are from Venus, men are from Mars,” I grew up hearing. “Their brains and bodies are just different. Nobody’s better or worse.”
But society doesn’t just tell us that women and men come from different planets. Society tells us that one planet is better than the other.
Here’s how I help students in my classes understand how this works. I start by asking students, “What behaviors, nouns, and adjectives are associated with women and with men?” We can quickly fill an entire whiteboard with their list. Here’s a word cloud I made with some of their common responses.
The activity always elicits both laughter and somberness. Already we can see the arbitrariness of certain gendered norms. But we’re not done yet. Next I ask, “What happens when a man takes on the behaviors associated with women? What do people say about him?”
Almost without fail, their first answers are, “He’s weak,” and “He’s gay.” In other words, society can’t figure out why someone would make that “backwards” choice to step down into feminine behaviors. They also notice that sometimes a guy might be admired for dappling in a positively-perceived feminine role, as in, “Wow, how humble and generous that you’re spending the day with your kids.” Two themes emerge here: Men taking feminized roles is seen as loss. And because those roles are seen as easier and weaker, men are given a low bar for praise.
Then we talk about what happens in the reverse, when women take on male roles. “People don’t believe she’s capable,” students say. She gets scorned for entering man’s spaces and trying to get ahead in a man’s way. “She’s bossy. She should be nicer.” But at the same time, she’ll be told she’s supposed to try, like “Women can do STEM too!”
In other words, society says it’s a gain for a woman to take on masculinized roles. But because those roles are seen as more valuable and esteemed, women are held to a high bar for acceptance into those roles.
Society doesn’t just associate different things with men and women, it says men’s things are better. This whole system of placing higher value on masculine-associated things has a name: patriarchy.
Notice how this system harms both men and women. For women, the system soaks them in messages that “success”—becoming bold, money-earning leaders in male-dominated fields—requires looking down on their own group and their very selves. And when they cross into that male realm, their ability to achieve is questioned. They become interlopers where they don’t belong. “Stop being so ambitious. You’re being intimidating.”
At the same time, society devalues the essential roles associated with women. Women who raise kids or teach in elementary schools are perceived as “settling” for less. The market literally places a lower price tag on those types of labor. Several women around our table admitted that becoming a mother stirred up an internal conflict—they wanted to raise children, but at some level they felt like mothering meant wasting their potential to break the glass ceiling into a man’s world—the measure of success they’d be trained to desire.
For decades, a flood of messaging has encouraged girls, “You can do all the things that used to be just for boys!” Girls can code. Girls can be doctors and supreme court justices. And that messaging has shown results—many more women have shifted into historically male-dominated fields.
But notice a problem: that messaging doesn’t change the underlying ranking of men’s and women’s roles. Unless we’re also telling boys that it’s worth pursuing success in female-associated roles like caregiving and teaching, we’re just reinforcing the message that boy’s roles are better than girl’s roles. The number of men in feminized roles like nursing and elementary-school teaching has hardly shifted in recent decades.
Patriarchy becomes especially harmful to boys when society associates normal, healthy behaviors with women, thereby cordoning those off as “loss” for men. Suicide, depression, and crime rates among boys and men attest to the psychological and social damage done by the pervasive message that they’re supposed to be tough—violent, even—rather than gentle, emotionally attuned, and attentive to their friends.
The list of harms caused by patriarchy could fill many more whiteboards. For example, when we associate God with masculinity only, we paint a warped picture of God’s character, God’s relationship to humans, and the God-like characteristics humans should emulate. When we tell boys that “playing house” or caring about their appearance is “girly,” we close off normal human behaviors that in other times and cultures have been associated with male as well as female children. When they hear that such activities are “gay,” we cause further the harm by falsely conflating sexual attraction with arbitrarily assigned gender roles.
So what can we do about it?
Telling girls that they can grow up to be whatever they want to be is not enough. We also need to tell boys that they can accomplish the valuable tasks long associated with women. We need to look for opportunities to correct pay differentials between jobs associated with men versus women. And we need to stop doubting the competence of women who succeed in male-dominated fields. We need to treat their contributions as assets, not threats.
This begins where you are. You can talk about this with your colleagues, bosses, mothers, sisters, partners, sons, and daughters. You can invite people to share the stories of what patriarchy does to us. And you can thank all the people in your life who are great at whatever they’re great at, whether in feminized or masculinized roles.