The Leadership Gap We Cannot Fix Until We See It

What happens when men and women work inside the same organizations but experience two very different workplaces?

A recent survey of 193 senior executives found that 90% of women believe female executives are judged more critically than their male counterparts. Only 35% of men agreed.

That is a 55-point perception gap. And perception gaps rarely close on their own; they close when people are willing to compare what they intend with what others experience.

The divide was just as striking when executives were asked about career success. Eighty-three percent of women said they must outperform men to achieve the same level of success, while only 28% of men shared that view. Only 37% of women believed promotion standards were applied equally across genders, and just 40% described their organizations as true meritocracies.

The numbers are concerning, but the gap between the numbers may matter even more. Men still hold the majority of senior leadership roles in many organizations. If many male leaders do not see the disparity, the systems they lead are unlikely to change.

We Cannot Solve a Problem We Experience Differently

Most men I have spoken with throughout my career—and during the research for my book, Men-In-The-Middle—do not wake up wondering how they can make the workplace more difficult for women.

Many sincerely believe they are evaluating everyone fairly. They may support women’s leadership, respect their female colleagues and believe opportunities should be based on merit. From their perspective, significant progress has been made.

Many women, however, experience something different.

They see the male colleague praised for being decisive while a woman using the same communication style is described as abrasive. They notice whose potential is assumed and whose readiness must be repeatedly proven. They recognize when men are offered stretch assignments because leaders believe they will grow into the opportunity, while women are expected to demonstrate every qualification before being considered.

This does not mean every unfavorable decision involving a woman is rooted in bias. It does mean that patterns can be real even when the individuals participating in them do not consciously intend to create them. That is what makes today’s leadership challenge so difficult.

The most persistent barriers may no longer be found in openly discriminatory policies. They are more likely to appear in informal conversations, subjective assessments, sponsorship decisions and assumptions about who looks ready for the next opportunity. The researchers behind the recent executive survey concluded that the challenge has increasingly shifted from overt attitudes about women’s leadership to the less visible processes determining who receives visibility, development and operational experience.

I wrote about one example in my book. I once worked with a leader I deeply respected who was unsettled when an internal engineering candidate did not disclose that she was pregnant. He had heard the news from her current manager and interpreted her silence as dishonesty. He was not upset that she was expecting; he was troubled by what he saw as a lack of transparency. When I explained that he could not ask about a medical condition—and that she was neither required nor expected to disclose it because doing so could introduce bias—he was surprised. Several male colleagues he consulted saw it the same way he did. That moment stayed with me because no one involved intended harm, yet the assumption itself revealed the problem.

Progress in Attitudes Has Not Produced Equality in Experience

The new research is part of a remarkable 60-year examination of attitudes toward women executives. That long view matters because it allows us to see patterns over time, not just reactions from one generation or moment.

In 1965, Harvard Business Review surveyed 2,000 executives about women in leadership. Similar questions were revisited approximately every 20 years, allowing researchers to compare changing perceptions across generations. The latest findings suggest that overt resistance to women executives has declined significantly—but agreement about women’s actual workplace experiences has not followed.

In other words, we have become more comfortable saying women can lead. We have not necessarily become equally skilled at recognizing the subtle ways their leadership may still be evaluated differently.

Women leaders frequently encounter what Catalyst describes as the leadership “double bind.” Leadership expectations have historically been associated with traits viewed as masculine. Women may therefore be criticized for being insufficiently forceful when they lead collaboratively, yet disliked or penalized when they demonstrate the assertiveness traditionally associated with executive authority. I can attest personally that I have heard these comments related to my career:

·      Be confident, but not intimidating.

·      Be tough, but not demanding.

·      Be ambitious, but not self-promoting.

·      Be direct, but not abrasive.

·      Be warm and supportive, but never appear too emotional.

·      Smile more, but not so much that people do not take you seriously.

The problem with these contradictory expectations is that women can spend enormous energy managing how their leadership will be interpreted—energy their male colleagues may be able to devote entirely to leading.

I say this often because it matters: I am not blaming men. I am pointing to patterns in the data so we can start a more honest conversation. Awareness comes first. Then we decide what to do with it: keep it buried, raise it to the surface or get curious enough to talk about it.

Meritocracy Requires More Than Good Intentions

Most organizations want to believe they are meritocracies. In the interviews for my book, merit came up often. Many men questioned why gender should factor into advancement at all if the goal is to choose the most qualified person.

But a meritocracy is not created simply because leaders intend to be fair. Good intentions matter, but they do not guarantee equal impact.

A true meritocracy requires organizations to examine whether people receive comparable access to sponsorship, feedback, stretch assignments, operational responsibility and influential relationships.

The 2025 Women in the Workplace research found that women continue to encounter a “broken rung” at the first promotion into management. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women were promoted. Entry-level women were also less likely than men to have sponsors or senior colleagues actively opening doors for them. Importantly, when women received the same career support as men, the gender gap in their desire for advancement disappeared.

That finding challenges a familiar assumption: that women simply lack ambition.

Perhaps women are not stepping away from advancement because they want less.

Perhaps some are responding rationally to a system in which the path appears steeper, the scrutiny feels greater and the support is less consistent.

The Men in the Middle Matter

This is where men—particularly the large group I call the “men in the middle”—become essential.

These are not the men actively fighting against gender equity. They are the executives, managers and colleagues who generally support fairness but may remain uncertain about what inequity looks like in everyday decisions or what role they should play in changing it.

They may hear that 90% of women executives feel judged more critically and instinctively think:

·      “That isn’t happening on my team.”

·      “I treat everyone the same.”

·      “I have never witnessed that.”

Those reactions are understandable. But they should be the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

The most productive response is curiosity:

·      What are women experiencing that I may not be seeing?

·      Are the words we use to describe leadership behavior consistent across genders?

·      Who receives opportunities based on potential, and who is expected to prove readiness first?

·      Whose mistakes are treated as part of the learning process, and whose mistakes become evidence that they were not ready?

·      Who is being discussed when they are not in the room—and who is advocating for them?

Curiosity does not require men to begin by accepting blame.

It asks them to accept the possibility that their experience may not be the only accurate one.

From Defending Our Intentions to Examining Our Impact

When someone tells us that a workplace process feels unfair, our natural instinct may be to defend the system or explain our intentions.

But intention and impact are not the same.

A leader can sincerely value fairness while participating in practices that produce unequal outcomes. An organization can celebrate women’s leadership while continuing to rely on informal networks that disproportionately develop and sponsor men. A company can have equitable policies on paper while employees experience inconsistency in how those policies are applied.

The answer is not to accuse every leader of bias.

The answer is to make the invisible more visible.

Organizations can begin by increasing transparency around promotion standards, reviewing the language used in performance evaluations, tracking access to high-visibility assignments and asking leaders to explain the evidence behind talent decisions. They can also create conversations where employees compare experiences without immediately debating whether those experiences are valid.

Most importantly, leaders can stay curious about the gap between the culture they believe they are creating and the cultureemployees actually experience.

The Conversation We Need Now

The most alarming message in this research is not simply that men and women disagree.

It is that they disagree so dramatically about something as fundamental as whether leadership is judged fairly.

If 90% of women executives believe women are evaluated more critically and most male executives do not recognize the same disparity, another policy alone will not close the gap.

We need conversations that help people see what they have not personally experienced.

We need men who are willing to listen without interpreting women’s stories as accusations against their character.

We need women who can describe patterns and experiences without being required to prove that every individual decision was discriminatory.

And we need leaders willing to examine not only who advances, but how opportunities, sponsorship, visibility and judgments accumulate over the course of a career.

Progress becomes possible when we stop arguing over whose perception is correct and become curious about what each perspective can teach us.

Because the leadership gap will not close merely when women are allowed into the room.

It will close when the people already in the room become willing to notice, question and change the standards by which leadership is recognized.