20 years ago, Harvard Business Review asked male and female executives whether women get judged more harshly than men at the top. Both groups said 35%. Ask the same question today and men still say 35%. Women say 90%.
That gap, from the latest instalment of HBR’s 60-year survey of executive perceptions, is the kind of number that should stop a leadership team in its tracks. It isn’t proof that men are being dishonest. It shows how differently two groups inside the same organisation can experience the same rules.
The survey’s second finding is arguably more useful for anyone doing succession planning. 83% of women believe they have to be more exceptional than men to succeed, up from 68% in 2006. Only 28% of men agree – barely any movement from 32% two decades ago. HBR’s authors point to what researchers call “prove-it-again” bias: women’s competence gets treated as something to be demonstrated repeatedly, while men’s gets assumed. One group is judged on potential, the other on an already-proven record. One group’s mistakes get filed away and forgotten. The others’ get remembered.
Put those two findings together and you get a career trajectory where women feel they’re clearing a higher bar under harsher scrutiny, while most men aren’t aware the bar exists. Perhaps that’s why women are increasingly turning down top jobs in-house, and why female entrepreneurship was the fastest growing sector of the economy in 2025?
We’ve experienced a version of this closer to home. We’re running listening sessions with male Built Environment sector leaders. Given the space to explain gender inequality at work, the men talked a lot about flexible working – hours, presenteeism, and client demands out of office hours. This is all worthwhile territory that’s genuinely difficult for many men too. And to be fair, a good number of them also recognise the double standards around competence vs confidence. Knowing what to do about it is another conversation altogether.
Let’s contrast this with when women in the same industry are asked what actually holds them back. They tend to start with who gets talked over in meetings, who gets brought informally into the big decisions, whose confidence gets mistaken for talent and whose ability has to keep proving itself. They talk about culture first, and policies and procedures second.
Neither group are wrong. They are answering different questions, because the two experiences of the same workplace are further apart than most leadership teams assume.
So, if you’re a leader in any area of a business, thinking about performance and succession, it’s worth asking yourself more searching questions than just “do we offer childcare vouchers?” Clearly, having supportive policies and benefits in place is important. But have you tried posing the harder questions that test subliminal biases and assumptions, such as:
- How do we know men and women have the same experience in our culture, and how does that compare to other organisations?
- Do we really understand who gets the benefit of the doubt when moving into more demanding roles and who has to have already done the job first?
- Whose mistakes are seen as a product of circumstances and whose are marked down as capability flaws?
- What are the practices and customs people don’t complain about because they’d be seen as too petty, but which nonetheless have a long-term corrosive effect?
None of this needs a working group or a big initiative. It needs a handful of honest conversations, woven into what is already happening: performance reviews, selection processes and staff surveys. The listening exercises we’re doing with men are a good example of what this can look like practically.
It also requires a willingness to hear an answer that doesn’t match your own experience, because the people who feel they’re clearing a bar nobody else can see don’t tend to make noise about it. They just stop putting themselves forward and then they leave. And by the time someone leaves, the chance to have the conversation you needed to has long gone. The chance probably went six to twelve months before they decided to hand in their notice.
Who should you be having this conversation with today before it’s too late?
