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A Life in Footnotes

Women are horrible bosses

Women are horrible bosses

Women Are Horrible Bosses

Women are horrible bosses.

At least, that seems to be the general consensus.

We are emotional.
We are difficult.
We are too aggressive.
We are not assertive enough.
We are too ambitious.
We don’t ask for promotions.
We ask for promotions too aggressively.

And if a woman is particularly irritated at work, there is always someone ready with the most sophisticated explanation available:

“Maybe it’s that time of the month.”

Before we officially diagnose half the female workforce, though, I thought we could do something radical.

Look at the data.

And the data, unfortunately for this particular theory, is rather inconvenient.

Gallup found that employees working for female managers were 33% engaged, compared with 27% for employees working for male managers. Employees of female managers also scored higher on 11 of Gallup’s 12 measures of engagement.

So apparently women are not universally destroying workplace morale.

Who knew?

And a large body of leadership research doesn’t show women to be inherently less effective leaders either. In other words, there isn’t some biological software bug that activates the moment a woman gets promoted.

There are terrible female managers.

There are terrible male managers.

There are wonderful ones too.

There are managers who should be given a team.

And there are managers who should perhaps be given a cactus and told to manage that.

The cactus deserves a chance.

The interesting question, then, isn’t:

“Are women bad bosses?”

It is:

“Why do we sometimes experience the same behaviour differently when it comes from a woman?”

And as a woman in middle management, I have a few theories.

—

Welcome to middle management: the generational sandwich

I am a woman in middle management.

Which, these days, feels less like a career stage and more like being the filling in a generational sandwich.

Above me are leaders who grew up with a very different definition of work.

Work hard.

Stay late.

Prove your commitment.

If your boss calls, answer.

If there is work, do it.

If you disagree with your boss, perhaps disagree internally.

And if you finish everything by 6 PM, congratulations.

Here is more work.

Then there is Gen Z.

And Gen Z has questions.

Why is this meeting necessary?

Why does this need to happen at 9 PM?

Can I have work-life boundaries?

Why can’t I disagree with my manager?

What is my career progression?

Why are we measuring hours instead of outcomes?

And honestly?

I get it.

My sister jokes that I am a Gen Z trapped in a Millennial body.

She’s not entirely wrong.

Millennials were the generation that got handed the “hustle harder” manual and eventually discovered that the prize at the end was…

another meeting.

We learned to be permanently available.

We learned that being good at your job often meant taking on more work.

We learned that saying no could be interpreted as lacking commitment.

We learned that burnout was something you dealt with quietly while continuing to send emails.

So when Gen Z comes along and says:

“Actually, why?”

a part of me wants to stand up and applaud.

Because we don’t want our successor generations to carry the exact same burden we did.

But there is a catch.

Not every difficult task is exploitation.

Not every deadline is toxic.

Not every uncomfortable conversation is bad management.

Sometimes your manager is asking you to do something because, shockingly, the company actually needs the thing done.

And this is where middle managers get squeezed.

Senior leadership says:

“We need more ownership.”

Gen Z hears:

“You want me to work weekends.”

Gen Z says:

“I need boundaries.”

Senior leadership hears:

“I don’t want to work.”

And middle management stands in the middle thinking:

“Can everybody please stop making me translate English into English?”

—

And apparently, being technical solves everything

I recently shared some of these experiences with a male friend.

He works in a different organisation and knows a woman Tech Lead whom everyone listens to.

She’s technically strong.

She’s respected.

She’s clearly very good at what she does.

So his conclusion was:

“If women are technical, they are respected.”

And I understand where that conclusion comes from.

But there is a small problem with it.

He was using one woman’s experience in one organisation to explain mine in another.

And somewhere along the way, the conversation subtly became about whether I was technically strong enough.

Which was…

Interesting.

Because that’s exactly what I was talking about.

When women talk about gendered experiences at work, the conversation can very quickly become:

Maybe you’re not technical enough.

Maybe you’re too emotional.

Maybe you’re not assertive enough.

Maybe you’re difficult.

Maybe you just need to prove yourself more.

In other words, somehow the woman becomes the variable that needs fixing.

But technical competence is not the whole story.

A woman can be technically brilliant and still experience gendered expectations.

She can be respected for her knowledge and still be judged differently when she exercises authority.

Because being a manager requires a completely different set of behaviours.

You have to say no.

You have to challenge people.

You have to give difficult feedback.

You have to hold people accountable.

You have to negotiate with senior leadership.

You have to defend your team.

You have to make decisions that somebody will inevitably dislike.

And this is where the conversation changes from:

“Does she know what she’s doing?”

to:

“Do I like the way she is doing it?”

Those are very different questions.

The woman Tech Lead my friend knows may be completely respected by her organisation.

Wonderful.

I hope she is.

That doesn’t invalidate the experiences of women elsewhere.

In fact, it proves something much simpler:

Women absolutely can earn respect through competence.

The question I’m interested in is what happens after that respect has been earned.

Can a woman be authoritative without being labelled aggressive?

Can she be angry without being called emotional?

Can she say no without being called difficult?

Can she be ambitious without being called intimidating?

Can she lead without being expected to soften every sharp edge?

Because being technically competent may get a woman into the room.

It doesn’t necessarily change the rules about how she is expected to behave once she’s there.

—

The woman who is “difficult”

Here is another uncomfortable truth:

A good boss is not necessarily a popular boss.

Sometimes the woman who looks difficult to her team is actually trying to get the work done.

She follows up.

She asks why something wasn’t completed.

She rejects poor-quality work.

She pushes back on unrealistic timelines.

She escalates problems.

She tells people when they are wrong.

She doesn’t let deadlines quietly die in a Jira ticket.

And suddenly she is “difficult.”

But a man doing exactly the same thing may be described as:

Decisive.

Demanding.

Results-oriented.

A tough leader.

A woman can do exactly the same thing and somehow become:

Difficult.

Intimidating.

Emotional.

Too aggressive.

The difference between “strong leader” and “difficult woman” can sometimes be astonishingly small.

—

Apparently, my face needs a performance review

Then there is the smile.

My current manager once told one of the female managers to smile more.

I wanted to punch him.

I didn’t, obviously.

HR would probably have had some thoughts about that.

But think about the absurdity.

A woman can be responsible for deadlines, people, escalations, business outcomes and the general survival of a project — and still receive feedback about the configuration of her face.

Apparently the KPI dashboard is incomplete until:

“Smiles appropriately during stressful situations”

has been added.

Imagine telling a male manager:

«“Your team delivered 97% of its targets this quarter. However, your facial expression has room for improvement.”»

He would probably ask for the data.

And rightly so.

But women are often expected to perform an additional emotional service at work:

Make everyone comfortable while you lead them.

—

And if she’s angry?

Ah.

Then she is emotional.

Or difficult.

Or hormonal.

Or perhaps…

“It’s that time of the month.”

This one fascinates me.

Because anger is an emotion.

Men experience anger too.

But when a man is angry, we can call him passionate.

Driven.

Assertive.

Under pressure.

When a woman is angry, suddenly we need to conduct a medical investigation.

“Are you okay?”

“Why are you reacting like this?”

“Maybe calm down.”

And, occasionally:

“Maybe it’s that time of the month.”

I have news.

It is always some time of the month.

The woman will continue to exist for approximately 30 days.

You’re going to have to deal with her.

The problem isn’t that women have emotions.

The problem is that we have somehow decided which emotions look acceptable on whom.

A man’s anger can be leadership.

A woman’s anger can become a personality defect.

And maybe women aren’t too emotional for leadership.

Maybe we’re simply uncomfortable with women displaying emotions that we’ve traditionally considered acceptable in men.

—

The manager is burning too

There is another piece of data that I find particularly interesting.

Gallup’s 2026 workplace data shows that women in the US report higher engagement than men — 34% versus 28% — but also substantially higher burnout: 31% of women versus 23% of men.

Among managers, the longer-term gap is even more striking: from 2022 to 2025, an average of 34% of female managers reported burnout compared with 27% of male managers.

So perhaps the woman who is carrying the team isn’t necessarily disengaged.

Perhaps she’s just exhausted.

And there is a difference.

In fact, global data shows managers themselves are under increasing pressure. Gallup found global manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025.

So middle management isn’t exactly the executive lounge with free almonds and a leather chair.

It is increasingly the place where organisations send conflicting instructions and hope somebody translates them into a PowerPoint.

And women are doing this while navigating another set of expectations outside work.

Which brings us to…

—

The promotion problem

We love saying women aren’t ambitious enough.

The data is considerably more complicated.

McKinsey’s 2025 Women in the Workplace report found that women and men are equally committed to their careers and motivated to do their best work.

Yet only 80% of women said they wanted to be promoted to the next level, compared with 86% of men.

At first glance, that looks like an ambition gap.

But then you look underneath.

Senior-level women who didn’t want to advance were more likely than senior men to say they had been passed over for promotions — 18% versus 12% — or that they didn’t see a realistic path to promotion — 21% versus 11%.

And when women and men receive similar career support, the promotion-aspiration gap largely disappears.

That changes the question.

Maybe women don’t lack ambition.

Maybe some women have simply looked at the next rung and thought:

“How much is this going to cost me?”

Because I have done that.

I can fight for my team.

I can argue about quality.

I can challenge decisions.

I can stand in a room and say:

“No. This isn’t good enough.”

But when it comes to saying:

“So… when am I getting promoted?”

Suddenly my ambition develops an interest in peace and inner tranquility.

Because sometimes I look at the next level and see:

More meetings.

More politics.

More responsibility.

More people problems.

More availability.

More stress.

And I think:

Is the title worth it?

That doesn’t necessarily mean I lack ambition.

It means I am calculating the price.

And I suspect many women are doing the same.

Sometimes women don’t lack ambition.

They lack the appetite for the price attached to ambition.

—

And then there is India

Because being a woman in middle management in India comes with a bonus package nobody asked for.

Marriage.

Parents.

In-laws.

Household responsibilities.

Festivals.

Family functions.

Children.

Childcare.

And the world’s most persistent Indian follow-up question:

“So… when are you having a baby?”

Women in their 30s can find themselves at a particularly complicated intersection.

This is often the stage when careers accelerate.

You are experienced.

You are ready for larger responsibilities.

You are finally senior enough to have some real influence.

And simultaneously, society may be checking your reproductive timeline like it’s a project dependency.

I know this because during a leadership interview, I was asked whether I was planning to have a baby.

Imagine interviewing someone for a leadership position and deciding that the most relevant strategic question is not:

How do you lead people?

but:

“What are your reproductive plans?”

Apparently my leadership potential came with a uterus-related dependency.

It was deeply uncomfortable.

And it made me realise something.

Women aren’t always being judged on what they have done.

Sometimes we’re being judged on what someone thinks we might do in the future.

—

India has numbers too

And this isn’t just a collection of women sitting around a coffee machine saying, “Men don’t understand us.”

A 2026 Aon study of 1,500 leaders across more than 30 Indian cities, including more than 400 women, found that men and women showed comparable levels of ambition and similar career drivers.

But the outcomes diverged sharply.

By age 50, only 20% of women had advanced within the same organisation, compared with 49% of men.

Women also reported more career transitions: 4.13 compared with 3.17 for men.

And the experience gap becomes even more interesting.

Nearly half of women leaders — 49% — were in enabling functions, compared with 37% of men.

Only 68% of women leaders had P&L experience, compared with 91% of men.

And in sales, the gap was enormous:

45% of women versus 90% of men.

This matters because senior leadership isn’t built only on being good at your job.

It is also built on getting the right opportunities.

Revenue responsibility.

P&L exposure.

High-visibility projects.

Strategic roles.

Sponsors.

People who say:

“Give her this opportunity. She’s ready.”

If women systematically receive fewer of those opportunities, telling them to simply “be more ambitious” is a little like telling someone to swim faster after quietly removing half the swimming pool.

—

The broken rung before the glass ceiling

We love talking about the glass ceiling.

But there is another problem.

The rung before it.

McKinsey’s 2025 data found that for every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, only 93 women were promoted.

That first step matters.

Because if fewer women become managers, there are naturally fewer women in the pipeline for senior leadership later.

By the C-suite, women represented only 29% of roles in the companies surveyed.

So when someone asks:

“Where are all the women leaders?”

Maybe stop looking only at the top.

Look at the rung underneath.

And the rung underneath that.

And the rung where someone decided that a woman with a child might be “less committed.”

And the rung where she was told she was “too aggressive.”

And the rung where she wasn’t given the revenue-generating project.

And the rung where she looked at the next promotion and thought:

“You know what? I have a life.”

—

Indra Nooyi wasn’t exactly selling the dream either

Indra Nooyi once described the problem rather bluntly:

“The biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict.”

This was not a woman who lacked ambition.

This was the former CEO of PepsiCo.

And yet she has spoken openly about the guilt and logistical difficulty of trying to be a senior executive and a mother at the same time.

That should tell us something.

If someone who reached the very top of corporate America says the system creates this conflict, perhaps the answer isn’t simply:

“Women should work harder.”

Perhaps the system itself needs work.

Because women shouldn’t have to choose between being a good mother and being a serious leader.

And they shouldn’t have to pretend the choice doesn’t exist just to prove that they are ambitious.

—

So, are women horrible bosses?

Maybe.

Some are.

Some men are horrible bosses too.

Some managers are wonderful.

Some managers should be legally prohibited from opening Microsoft Teams.

Gender doesn’t determine any of that.

But gender can influence how we interpret the same behaviour.

A man who is demanding can be “strong.”

A woman who is demanding can be “difficult.”

A man who is confident can be “decisive.”

A woman who is confident can be “intimidating.”

A man who is angry can be “passionate.”

A woman who is angry can apparently require an investigation into her menstrual calendar.

And a woman who isn’t smiling?

Clearly a performance issue.

So perhaps the real problem isn’t that women are horrible bosses.

Perhaps we’ve created a specification for the “ideal female leader” that is completely ridiculous.

She needs to be:

Confident but humble.

Strong but gentle.

Ambitious but not intimidating.

Firm but warm.

Successful but available.

A mother but never distracted by motherhood.

A boss but still everyone’s friend.

And preferably smiling.

Always smiling.

Even while the production environment is on fire.

Meanwhile, men are occasionally granted the radical luxury of simply being competent.

And maybe that is the conversation worth having.

Not:

“Are women good bosses?”

But:

“Are women allowed to exercise authority without having their personality put on trial?”

Because technical competence may get a woman into the room.

Being a good manager may earn her respect.

But exercising authority as a woman can still come with a completely different set of expectations.

And perhaps that is why some women stop climbing.

Not because they can’t.

Not because they don’t want to.

But because they look at the next rung and think:

“Honestly? I have a life.”

And I can’t even blame them.

Maybe the goal shouldn’t be to teach women how to survive the existing leadership system.

Maybe we should build a leadership system that doesn’t require survival skills.

One where ambition doesn’t require sacrificing your sanity.

One where motherhood isn’t treated as a career risk.

One where a woman can be angry without someone checking her menstrual calendar.

One where a manager can say “No” without having to smile while doing it.

And one where being a good boss doesn’t mean being the most liked person in the room.

Because sometimes the boss who looks difficult is the one actually getting the work done.

And sometimes the boss everyone likes is just…

not checking Jira.