Welcome to the second instalment of The Ambition Recession. We’re looking at ambition - from Aotearoa and Australia to the wider world - touching culture, politics, economics, history, and philosophy along the way.
When women lead, we all benefit.
Women are uniquely suited to public leadership, but are constrained by traps and barriers that flatten and punish ambition.
Women’s political ambition is a public good and critical necessity. We are bleeding talent and progress to an inequitable tax, levied on our time, appearance and contribution.
Righting the balance requires overcorrection. Women should claim more than feels comfortable and men should give up more than feels fair.
Women in politics are up against it
This past weekend, I spent two days with hundreds of women in politics. Women who put themselves in the public eye to serve their community. They juggle jobs, volunteering, caring responsibilities and families, then take a deep breath to sit at the Council table and cop it from naysayers and newspapers.
These women are passionate and dedicated to their jobs. They are not complainers. But when I asked, they shared some of their biggest issues with me. These align with what I hear from female politicians everywhere:
- They face significant public backlash and in-house friction
- They are swamped by their workloads, inboxes and reading requirements.
- They receive abuse, including death threats - and their home addresses are matters of public record.
- They have guilt and fear about not doing all their competing responsibilities justice
- They struggle with “imposter syndrome” (Am I really good enough to be here? Shouldn’t someone more qualified or better than me take this seat? Do I really have anything valuable to add?).
In this piece, I’ll tell you what I told them, and share a few key slides from my keynote.
Perspective in public service
I kicked off as I often do for politicians: exploring the prospect of long-term legacy leadership in a political system hamstrung by reactivity, short-term budgeting and election cycles.
We talked about perspective - its importance and difficulty, and how to channel a diverse and long-term outlook to that conquers short-term reactivity. Then, we dug into the traps that make it difficult to maintain perspective in public service.
Perspective traps
In local government, direct community connection and tangible issues make it difficult to maintain perspective. There are three perspective traps detailed in Local Legends:
- Present/urgent trap - There’s always an urgent problem to solve, often from someone you know.
- Pragmatic trap - It’s tempting to quickly “solve this one yourself” rather than go through the proper process.
- Public opinion trap - A few noisy voices dominate public conversation, which can hijack decision-making.
Women play on hard mode
For women, each trap is even trappier.
Women are flattened by the present/urgent trap because we juggle a heavier mental, emotional and domestic load than men, and are expected to be more responsive and obliging.
We fall into the pragmatic trap easily because in our personal lives we are so often the “default person.”
The public opinion trap is doubly difficult - because women are socialised to be agreeable, and media coverage is disproportionately personalised and aggressive to female politicians.
Then, I unveiled a fourth trap, especially for the women in the room - but, of course, for women everywhere.
The patriarchy tax
Politicians lead in a system designed by and for men. Rules written when women couldn’t vote, open a bank account, or wear trousers to work, still shape how institutions run and decisions are made.
At the conference, I called it the patriarchy trap - but there’s no avoiding it, so it’s really a tax.
Here’s how the patriarchy tax shows up in public leadership:
- Age
- Appearance
- Assurance
- Ambition.
Age
Women’s competence is assessed by their age - which is never the right one.
For women under 35, youthful eagerness is seen as incompetence. The same behaviour in men is coded as impressive ambition. Women are sexually objectified, valued more for their appearance than their contribution, and condescended to on the daily. Under 35 is too young. For women over 45, experience, earned wisdom and boundaries, (traits seen as leadership in men), are proof of a difficult personality or emerging irrelevance. Over 45 is too old.
Appearance
Women are judged on their appearance, so they invest time in it.
The average Australian woman spends $1300 per year more on beauty than men, adding up to a small fortune over a lifetime, but the real cost is lost time and distraction. Women spend around two and a half hours more than men each week on personal grooming tasks: 130 hours a year. Three full work weeks and change. Time spent painting, plucking and tweaking, that could be spent leading, earning, or contributing.
But women’s investment in their appearance is not frivolous vanity. The way we look is used as a proxy for our value and competence. There are social, professional, political and financial consequences for skipping the mirror, so women wear the time, money, and opportunity costs of appearance expectations.
Assurance
Women are held to higher standards of professional performance, so we underestimate their competence.
The comparative over-confidence of men provides professional and political advantages. Because they overestimate their abilities, men are more likely to put their ideas forward, speak up, call out decisions they think are wrong, and sustain failure or criticism.
Women do not inherently lack confidence and certainly do not lack competence, but we are held to higher professional standards than men. Research in the US and UK over three decades found our performance is judged more harshly than men - 49% stricter in the US, 38% in the UK.
In Council, that means women are less likely to speak up or offer an opinion unless they’ve done all their reading, understood the different arguments, and got their head around the technicalities - which leaves a vacuum, filled by men’s voices.
Ambition
Ambition in women is seen as undesirable and often publicly shamed.
Women in politics face a double bind. Studies show female candidates face a dual penalty: if they act warmly, they are seen as likeable but incompetent; if they act assertively, they are seen as competent but cold.
This is thanks to a phenomenon known as Role Congruity Theory - broad, often unconscious discomfort with people who publicly break stereotypical gender norms. Women are damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
Women are uniquely suited for public leadership
The very things that make it difficult for women in public leadership make them excellent at it.
Women have exceptional strategic advantages as a public leader.
On average, they:
- Ask more questions, of more people, leading to a better-informed and more nuanced understanding of complex issues.
- Gravitate to facilitative leadership, building alliances and defaulting to collaboration over competition.
- Build and maintain strong relationships, with emotional and personal connections which sustain over time.
- Are more likely to admit when they don’t understand something and seek clarification.
- Are well-prepared, read their papers thoroughly and often do research on their own accord.
The same confidence/competence gap and social conditioning that creates added difficulty for women in politics happen to underpin leadership traits that lead to high-quality public decisions.
Women’s political ambition is not an indulgence, it’s a public good.
The #1 way to fight the patriarchy tax
For paid subscribers, keep reading to enjoy the instantly actionable advice I offered to hundreds of women in politics last weekend, to push back on the patriarchy tax. This advice applies to all women, in all industries and is also valuable insight for men.
I’ve then got advice specifically for men to improve gender equity in their lives and workplaces. If you want to do your bit, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is.
Overcorrection is the answer
Women face asymmetric odds. To bring the system into balance, we need to overcorrect.
Audacity: Back yourself to the point of delusion
A friend, let’s call him Paul, went on a ski trip with his wife. When they enrolled in ski lessons with an instructor, they self-reported their current ability out of 10.
Paul, a mediocre skier, rated himself a 7 - until he spoke to his wife, an excellentskier, and discovered she’d rated herself a 5! Panicked, Paul raced back to the sign-up desk, to change his rating. The coordinator smiled and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We add two extra points to the women’s score, and remove two points from the men.”
You will need the same correction when you choose which roles and opportunities to go for and which issues to take action on.
Put your hand up for things you feel utterly under qualified for. Repeat.
Boundaries: Make choices that feel sickeningly selfish
Women say yes to more people, help out with more things, and over-consider others in decision-making. Time-out feels selfish. This is hardcoded: the idea our time is not our own, and looking after ourselves is an indulgence.
To remedy this imbalance, set boundaries that make you feel ill with guilt.
Take time for yourself, your job, and your passions with total impunity. Do not justify your ambitions through the lens of serving another person (“it makes me a better mother/ partner/ etc”). You wanting something is enough of a reason to have it.
Your work (and your life, for that matter) is not a privilege, luxury, or gift. It is your work, it matters, and you are entitled to it.
Contribution: Speak anyway
Transiting to last weekend’s conference, we took a tarmac bus from the airport terminal to the plane. A Mayor and I got chatting about water issues, when a man nearby overheard and interrupted. “There’s a lot of things people don’t understand about water” he said as preamble, then launched into the complexities of rural water in Australia.
The Mayor and I nodded, smiled, and, more than once, attempted to resume our chat. Bus Man continued blithely. He did not ask us any questions. He did not check to see what we already knew. He spoke with utter confidence that what he had to say was important enough to warrant his interruption.
God, grant us all the confidence of a man on a Qantas bus.
Women facing “imposter syndrome” undervalue their experience, expertise and contribution. They read more, talk to more people, and spend more time considering the full picture before they speak - yet sometimes, still don’t speak! Stop it. Speak.
Assume your point of view is valuable and overcorrect on your right to speak.
Domestic help: make requests, threats, and/or payment.
The biggest battle for working women is fought at home. Women carry a domestic load of staggering proportions - 400 extra hours of housework a year for partnered women. If you have kids, that number rises to 800 hours every year on domestic labour - cooking, booking, cleaning, childcare, shopping, planning, et al. It gets even worse for breadwinners. When women are the higher-earner in the relationship, they do more of the household labour.
With an imbalance that high, overcorrection must be radical.
Do not ask for “help”. You do not have to be the default person in your household. Do not over-praise your partner’s contributions. Demand ownership.
Do not be fooled into thinking you “just have different standards” or are a controlling banshee. This is intended to undermine how valuable your contribution to your family, household and economy is, so it remains unpaid. This is vital, meaningful work, and must be shared.
Or/and, pay someone for their labour. You pay a plumber, mechanic, and accountant, because you value their skills and what they produce. You can do the same for unpaid household tasks.
You spend a part-time job’s worth of labour hours looking after others. Take drastic action to redistribute this work.
Advice for men
Telling this to a room of women is important, but it is not enough. Many men are deeply affected and upset by this imbalance, but unsure what to do. They fear getting it wrong or making things worse.
Here are two simple interventions that make a big difference.
- Assume you are oblivious.
- Overcorrect to the point of discomfort.
Step one: Assume you are oblivious
I have met very few men who want women to suffer for their ambition - or at all. But I have met many men with good intentions who are utterly oblivious to the struggles of the women around them.
They chatter away, having a great time, with no idea how much we’re carrying, or what it took to get here. They’re oblivious to how few questions they’ve asked or what assumptions they’ve made about our capacity, expertise, or contribution. They think we’re fascinated by their stories, because they’re used to attention, and we’ve been socialised to smile and nod.
As a starting point, men, please assume you are oblivious.
Assume you overemphasise the value of your contribution, overestimate your skills and overplay your contribution. Assume the women around you absorb additional and unseen responsibilities. Assume you take up more than your fair share of space. Assume the women you care for are not adequately recognised or compensated for their contribution, and they battle constraints that are invisible to you.
Unhelpful biases are so hard-coded into your brain that waiting for one to reveal itself to you is not enough. Bet on your ignorance.
Step two: Overcorrect the imbalance
The Geena Davis Institute found women make up just 17% of crowd scenes in film - and to viewers, that looks balanced. At 33%, the crowd appears to be mostly women.
When women take up space, especially in public, it might feel unfair or unbalanced, because we are used to inequity.
Fight the instinct to feel hard-done by, and lean into overcorrecting.
- When you think you’re doing your fair share at home, do much more.
- When you think you’ve been accommodating, check again.
- When you want to tell another story, shut up.
- When you think it’s your turn, ask another question.
- When you think you’ve said hardly anything, shut up even further.
You get the idea. What looks like fairness, just like the crowd scene, probably isn’t. Your over correction moves us closer to parity.
For advanced players, step in to correct this behaviour in other men, too.
In summary
- When women lead, we all benefit. Women are uniquely suited to public leadership, but are constrained by traps and barriers that flatten and punish ambition.
- Women’s political ambition is a public good and critical necessity. We are bleeding talent and progress to an inequitable tax, levied on our time, appearance and contribution.
- Righting the balance requires overcorrection. Women should claim more than feels comfortable and men should give up more than feels fair.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of The Ambition Recession.
-AM.