A recent Inc. article, “New Research Explains Why Women Undervalue Themselves at Work,” highlights something many women have experienced but have not always had the language to explain: the gap is not necessarily in skill, ambition, or readiness. The gap is often in confidence. But even that word, confidence, can be misleading. Too often, when we talk about women and confidence, the implied message is: women need to fix themselves. Speak up more. Be bolder. Ask for the raise. Apply for the...

For more than a decade, women have been encouraged to "lean in." Speak up. Take the stretch assignment. Ask for the promotion. Sit at the table. Yet as a recent Forbes article points out, many ambitious women continue to encounter a frustrating reality: the more they lean in, the more pushback they sometimes receive. According to the article, and other research shows, women are often viewed differently than men when they display the same leadership behaviors. Assertiveness can be labeled...

A recent study highlighted in Phys.org found something both fascinating and troubling: people are far more likely to notice when majority groups are absent than when minority groups are missing. In one experiment, participants were 14 times more likely to notice the absence of white faces than black faces. In another, most participants failed to notice when all expert voices quoted were men. That finding matters deeply to the work I’ve done throughout my career and in my book,...