Last Updated:July 15, 2026, 16:51 IST

Women leaders report being judged more harshly, held to higher standards and feeling they must constantly prove themselves, even as men believe workplaces have become equitable

A recent analysis by Harvard Business Review says 35% of men still believe women executives are judged more critically, but 90% of women say they experience exactly that.

Nearly six decades ago, when researchers asked American executives whether women belonged in leadership, the answers reflected a workplace where senior management was overwhelmingly male and traditional gender stereotypes were widely accepted. In 2026, women lead Fortune 500 companies, run global banks, head technology firms and occupy boardrooms once considered out of reach. Yet a surprising finding has emerged from a Harvard Business Review survey.

The analysis revisiting workplace attitudes over 60 years suggests that bias has not disappeared, it has evolved. Women leaders increasingly report being judged more harshly, held to higher standards and feeling they must constantly prove themselves, even as many men believe workplaces have become largely equitable.

While overt sexism has declined dramatically, many women say leading today still feels fundamentally different from leading as a man.

“Yes, corporate culture still makes excuses for male leaders who fall short of expectations, while punitive actions are swifter for women leaders. It’s acceptable for men to delegate, while same attribute in a woman is perceived as ‘lazy’. There are conscious steps taken to build authority and legitimacy around male leaders, while women are expected to lead by example and elbow their way to authority,” said a 35-year-old senior marketing manager in Noida, who wished anonymity.

Have Women Really Broken The Glass Ceiling?

The Harvard Business Review study builds on one of the longest-running datasets tracking workplace attitudes towards women in leadership.

The original survey was conducted in 1965, covering roughly 2,000 male and female executives. Researchers repeated the survey every 20 years—in 1985, 2005 and 2025—allowing them to compare how perceptions have changed across six decades.

On many measures, the results are encouraging. Compared with the 1960s, executives today are far more accepting of women in senior leadership. Explicit beliefs that women are less capable leaders have declined sharply, reflecting broader changes in education, workforce participation and corporate diversity efforts.

“While spring transformation programmes and diversity hiring targets, as well as representation targets for many organisations, have allowed them to make measurable progress towards diversity, it takes more cultural change to create a greater sense of inclusion,” said Sana Raees Khan, Founder of SRK Legal & Supreme Court Lawyer.

“For employees, opportunities must be equal; they must be able to meaningfully engage in decision-making and share ideas without bias. Diversity brings people to the room, inclusion gets them to a genuine place where they can move forward. Even with meaningful progress towards work environments that are more diverse, there is still a noticeable absence of inclusiveness. We can see it  how uneven promotion rates remain common, in wage gaps, and in the underrepresentation of people at senior leadership levels,” explained Khan.

But another set of findings tells a more complicated story. Twenty years ago, men and women responded almost identically when asked whether women leaders faced more critical scrutiny in executive roles. About 35% of both groups agreed. Today, that gap has widened dramatically. Around 35% of men still believe women executives are judged more critically, but 90% of women say they experience exactly that.

What Has Changed Over The Past 60 Years?

There is little doubt that women have made enormous progress. Women today occupy far more executive positions, board seats and senior management roles than they did a generation ago. Educational attainment has risen, professional opportunities have expanded and leadership stereotypes have softened considerably.

Many multinational companies now actively track diversity targets, leadership pipelines and board representation. Flexible work policies, parental leave and inclusion initiatives have become far more common than they were even two decades ago.

Yet representation has not automatically translated into equal workplace experiences.

The Harvard analysis suggests that men and women increasingly perceive the same workplace through very different lenses. While many male executives believe organisational fairness has improved substantially, women continue to report subtle barriers that shape promotions, evaluations and day-to-day leadership experiences.

“It has become clear from research and experience at workplace that leadership is measured differently at times. Traits like decisiveness and assertiveness are often considered attractive in men but might be perceived as negative in women. Females, on the other hand, are typically expected to combine authority with warmth, thus going above and beyond what is deemed acceptable in the range of their behaviour . With the rising awareness of these biases, there remains pressure on performance appraisals, promotions, and readiness for leadership in many industries based on implicit stereotypes,” said Khan.

Why Do Women Still Experience Leadership Differently?

Perhaps the study’s most striking finding concerns performance expectations. Today, 83% of women believe they must be more exceptional than men to succeed in leadership positions. Among men, only 28% share that view.

The perception gap has widened over time. In 2005, 68% of women and 32% of men felt women needed to outperform men to advance. Instead of narrowing, the divide has grown.

Researchers suggest this reflects the evolution of workplace bias. Rather than overt discrimination, many women now describe subtler challenges—greater scrutiny, higher expectations, tougher performance evaluations and pressure to continually demonstrate competence.

Behavioural research points to what psychologists often describe as “second-generation bias”. Unlike explicit discrimination, these biases are embedded in organisational norms, leadership expectations and informal decision-making, making them harder to identify and address.

“Gender bias has definitely evolved but not been erased from workplaces. Overt sexism has given away to micro-aggressions. Tone and body language shift in communications from men to women. A predominantly female workforce is celebrated as progress though the leadership is overwhelmingly male. Office architecture accommodates dedicated smoking zones used mostly by men, but no women-only spaces exist beyond washrooms. In some offices, women adhering to more traditional roles of marriage and motherhood are more celebrated, while in others they are outright outcast. The playbook for men is simple: show up. For women, it is conveniently complex,” said the marketing manager, who is single, and lives alone in Delhi.

A recent study published in the Journal of World Business similarly argues that gender inequality increasingly persists through organisational structures and everyday workplace practices rather than overt prejudice. These subtle biases can influence promotions, leadership evaluations and access to high-visibility assignments, even in organisations committed to diversity.

The result is a workplace where many women feel they must continually earn credibility that their male peers are more readily assumed to possess.

“Despite decades of progress towards gender parity in the workplace, empirical evidence suggests that leadership continues to be assessed through a gendered lens. Women in positions of authority frequently confront a double bind: assertiveness invites accusations of excessive severity, while conciliation is often interpreted as a lack of resolve — a paradox their male counterparts encounter far less often. Although scholars differ on the extent of this disparity, and many argue that structured evaluation practices have narrowed it considerably, the broad consensus remains that perceptions of competence and authority are not yet fully untethered from gender,” said a senior vice-president at a finance company, who requested anonymity.

Women Continue To Be Underrepresented In CEO?

Corporate India has seen a steady rise in women entering leadership pipelines across banking, consulting, technology, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and start-ups. A TeamLease Digital report said the proportion of women in the technology workforce in GCCs is expected to increase to 35% by 2027 from 25% now.

Despite this, women continue to be underrepresented in CEO and business-head roles, particularly positions carrying full profit-and-loss responsibility. Many remain concentrated in functions such as human resources, communications, legal and support services, while operational leadership roles, which traditionally produce future CEOs, remain dominated by men.

Leadership experts often argue that the issue is no longer simply hiring more women but ensuring they receive the sponsorship, strategic assignments and commercial experience required to advance into the highest executive positions.

“Despite the increasing trend of women taking education and career choices seriously in India, there is still a low number of women in high-ranking leadership positions. Structural factors like unequal opportunities for care-giving, access to professional networks, leadership opportunities, and the continued persistence of stereotypes about leadership also persist in shaping opportunities for advancement. Businesses also sometimes devalue flexibility when considering employment terms. More representation needs to be created through ongoing mentorship, flexibility in policies, transparent succession planning, and access to strategic business leadership roles and experiences,” stressed Khan.

Is The Problem Representation Or Workplace Culture?

Many organisations have focused on increasing representation through hiring targets and board diversity mandates. But representation alone cannot eliminate structural barriers.

Leadership researchers increasingly distinguish between mentorship and sponsorship. Mentors provide advice, while sponsors actively advocate for promotions, key assignments and leadership opportunities.

Performance reviews, promotion processes, networking opportunities, flexible work arrangements and the “parenthood penalty” continue to shape career progression in ways that are not always visible in formal policies.

“The parenthood penalty refers to the unequal impact of family life on women’s careers. After childbirth, women are less likely to be promoted or receive significant pay raises, while men are far less likely to face the same consequences. Fathers are generally not assumed to be less ambitious after having children, but such assumptions are often made about mothers. The gap is further exacerbated by career interruptions, inadequate childcare support and inflexible working patterns. Addressing it will require greater emphasis on shared parenting, better childcare provisions and workplace policies that measure performance by outcomes rather than assumptions about caregiving responsibilities,” Khan explained.

These dynamics help explain why formal equality does not always translate into equal career experiences.

How AI Could Change Leadership — For Better Or Worse

Many companies are beginning to use AI tools for recruitment, performance evaluations and workforce planning. In theory, algorithm-driven systems could reduce subjective assessments by focusing more consistently on measurable outcomes and skills. But AI is not automatically free of bias.

If algorithms are trained on historical organisational data reflecting decades of unequal promotion patterns, they may unintentionally reinforce existing disparities rather than eliminate them.

At the same time, AI could shift workplace cultures away from presenteeism towards measurable productivity, potentially benefiting employees seeking greater flexibility.

Whether AI becomes a tool for fairness or another source of hidden bias may depend less on the technology itself than on the data and human decisions shaping it.

Today, few question women’s ability to run companies, governments or global organisations. The more difficult question is whether workplaces have evolved enough for women and men to experience leadership on genuinely equal terms.

The Harvard findings suggest that while barriers have become less visible, many have not disappeared. Instead, they have shifted into subtler forms that influence who gets noticed, who gets promoted and who feels they must constantly prove they belong.

About the Author

Shilpy Bisht

Shilpy Bisht is a News Editor at News18, where she leads the English app operations. She writes on world affairs, health, AI, career, business, and issues affecting women and children. A former print …Read More

The analysis revisiting workplace attitudes over 60 years suggests that bias has not disappeared, it has evolved. Women leaders increasingly report being judged more harshly, held to higher standards and feeling they must constantly prove themselves, even as many men believe workplaces have become largely equitable.

While overt sexism has declined dramatically, many women say leading today still feels fundamentally different from leading as a man.

“Yes, corporate culture still makes excuses for male leaders who fall short of expectations, while punitive actions are swifter for women leaders. It’s acceptable for men to delegate, while same attribute in a woman is perceived as ‘lazy’. There are conscious steps taken to build authority and legitimacy around male leaders, while women are expected to lead by example and elbow their way to authority,” said a 35-year-old senior marketing manager in Noida, who wished anonymity.

Have Women Really Broken The Glass Ceiling?

The Harvard Business Review study builds on one of the longest-running datasets tracking workplace attitudes towards women in leadership.

The original survey was conducted in 1965, covering roughly 2,000 male and female executives. Researchers repeated the survey every 20 years—in 1985, 2005 and 2025—allowing them to compare how perceptions have changed across six decades.

On many measures, the results are encouraging. Compared with the 1960s, executives today are far more accepting of women in senior leadership. Explicit beliefs that women are less capable leaders have declined sharply, reflecting broader changes in education, workforce participation and corporate diversity efforts.

“While spring transformation programmes and diversity hiring targets, as well as representation targets for many organisations, have allowed them to make measurable progress towards diversity, it takes more cultural change to create a greater sense of inclusion,” said Sana Raees Khan, Founder of SRK Legal & Supreme Court Lawyer.

“For employees, opportunities must be equal; they must be able to meaningfully engage in decision-making and share ideas without bias. Diversity brings people to the room, inclusion gets them to a genuine place where they can move forward. Even with meaningful progress towards work environments that are more diverse, there is still a noticeable absence of inclusiveness. We can see it  how uneven promotion rates remain common, in wage gaps, and in the underrepresentation of people at senior leadership levels,” explained Khan.

But another set of findings tells a more complicated story. Twenty years ago, men and women responded almost identically when asked whether women leaders faced more critical scrutiny in executive roles. About 35% of both groups agreed. Today, that gap has widened dramatically. Around 35% of men still believe women executives are judged more critically, but 90% of women say they experience exactly that.

What Has Changed Over The Past 60 Years?

There is little doubt that women have made enormous progress. Women today occupy far more executive positions, board seats and senior management roles than they did a generation ago. Educational attainment has risen, professional opportunities have expanded and leadership stereotypes have softened considerably.

Many multinational companies now actively track diversity targets, leadership pipelines and board representation. Flexible work policies, parental leave and inclusion initiatives have become far more common than they were even two decades ago.

Yet representation has not automatically translated into equal workplace experiences.

The Harvard analysis suggests that men and women increasingly perceive the same workplace through very different lenses. While many male executives believe organisational fairness has improved substantially, women continue to report subtle barriers that shape promotions, evaluations and day-to-day leadership experiences.

“It has become clear from research and experience at workplace that leadership is measured differently at times. Traits like decisiveness and assertiveness are often considered attractive in men but might be perceived as negative in women. Females, on the other hand, are typically expected to combine authority with warmth, thus going above and beyond what is deemed acceptable in the range of their behaviour . With the rising awareness of these biases, there remains pressure on performance appraisals, promotions, and readiness for leadership in many industries based on implicit stereotypes,” said Khan.

Why Do Women Still Experience Leadership Differently?

Perhaps the study’s most striking finding concerns performance expectations. Today, 83% of women believe they must be more exceptional than men to succeed in leadership positions. Among men, only 28% share that view.

The perception gap has widened over time. In 2005, 68% of women and 32% of men felt women needed to outperform men to advance. Instead of narrowing, the divide has grown.

Researchers suggest this reflects the evolution of workplace bias. Rather than overt discrimination, many women now describe subtler challenges—greater scrutiny, higher expectations, tougher performance evaluations and pressure to continually demonstrate competence.

Behavioural research points to what psychologists often describe as “second-generation bias”. Unlike explicit discrimination, these biases are embedded in organisational norms, leadership expectations and informal decision-making, making them harder to identify and address.

“Gender bias has definitely evolved but not been erased from workplaces. Overt sexism has given away to micro-aggressions. Tone and body language shift in communications from men to women. A predominantly female workforce is celebrated as progress though the leadership is overwhelmingly male. Office architecture accommodates dedicated smoking zones used mostly by men, but no women-only spaces exist beyond washrooms. In some offices, women adhering to more traditional roles of marriage and motherhood are more celebrated, while in others they are outright outcast. The playbook for men is simple: show up. For women, it is conveniently complex,” said the marketing manager, who is single, and lives alone in Delhi.

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A recent study published in the Journal of World Business similarly argues that gender inequality increasingly persists through organisational structures and everyday workplace practices rather than overt prejudice. These subtle biases can influence promotions, leadership evaluations and access to high-visibility assignments, even in organisations committed to diversity.

The result is a workplace where many women feel they must continually earn credibility that their male peers are more readily assumed to possess.

“Despite decades of progress towards gender parity in the workplace, empirical evidence suggests that leadership continues to be assessed through a gendered lens. Women in positions of authority frequently confront a double bind: assertiveness invites accusations of excessive severity, while conciliation is often interpreted as a lack of resolve — a paradox their male counterparts encounter far less often. Although scholars differ on the extent of this disparity, and many argue that structured evaluation practices have narrowed it considerably, the broad consensus remains that perceptions of competence and authority are not yet fully untethered from gender,” said a senior vice-president at a finance company, who requested anonymity.

Women Continue To Be Underrepresented In CEO?

Corporate India has seen a steady rise in women entering leadership pipelines across banking, consulting, technology, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and start-ups. A TeamLease Digital report said the proportion of women in the technology workforce in GCCs is expected to increase to 35% by 2027 from 25% now.

Despite this, women continue to be underrepresented in CEO and business-head roles, particularly positions carrying full profit-and-loss responsibility. Many remain concentrated in functions such as human resources, communications, legal and support services, while operational leadership roles, which traditionally produce future CEOs, remain dominated by men.

Leadership experts often argue that the issue is no longer simply hiring more women but ensuring they receive the sponsorship, strategic assignments and commercial experience required to advance into the highest executive positions.

“Despite the increasing trend of women taking education and career choices seriously in India, there is still a low number of women in high-ranking leadership positions. Structural factors like unequal opportunities for care-giving, access to professional networks, leadership opportunities, and the continued persistence of stereotypes about leadership also persist in shaping opportunities for advancement. Businesses also sometimes devalue flexibility when considering employment terms. More representation needs to be created through ongoing mentorship, flexibility in policies, transparent succession planning, and access to strategic business leadership roles and experiences,” stressed Khan.

Is The Problem Representation Or Workplace Culture?

Many organisations have focused on increasing representation through hiring targets and board diversity mandates. But representation alone cannot eliminate structural barriers.

Leadership researchers increasingly distinguish between mentorship and sponsorship. Mentors provide advice, while sponsors actively advocate for promotions, key assignments and leadership opportunities.

Performance reviews, promotion processes, networking opportunities, flexible work arrangements and the “parenthood penalty” continue to shape career progression in ways that are not always visible in formal policies.

“The parenthood penalty refers to the unequal impact of family life on women’s careers. After childbirth, women are less likely to be promoted or receive significant pay raises, while men are far less likely to face the same consequences. Fathers are generally not assumed to be less ambitious after having children, but such assumptions are often made about mothers. The gap is further exacerbated by career interruptions, inadequate childcare support and inflexible working patterns. Addressing it will require greater emphasis on shared parenting, better childcare provisions and workplace policies that measure performance by outcomes rather than assumptions about caregiving responsibilities,” Khan explained.

These dynamics help explain why formal equality does not always translate into equal career experiences.

How AI Could Change Leadership — For Better Or Worse

Many companies are beginning to use AI tools for recruitment, performance evaluations and workforce planning. In theory, algorithm-driven systems could reduce subjective assessments by focusing more consistently on measurable outcomes and skills. But AI is not automatically free of bias.

If algorithms are trained on historical organisational data reflecting decades of unequal promotion patterns, they may unintentionally reinforce existing disparities rather than eliminate them.

At the same time, AI could shift workplace cultures away from presenteeism towards measurable productivity, potentially benefiting employees seeking greater flexibility.

Whether AI becomes a tool for fairness or another source of hidden bias may depend less on the technology itself than on the data and human decisions shaping it.

Today, few question women’s ability to run companies, governments or global organisations. The more difficult question is whether workplaces have evolved enough for women and men to experience leadership on genuinely equal terms.

The Harvard findings suggest that while barriers have become less visible, many have not disappeared. Instead, they have shifted into subtler forms that influence who gets noticed, who gets promoted and who feels they must constantly prove they belong.

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