The Myth of the Strong Woman at Work
Author’s Note
I write for women who lead often quietly, often while carrying more than anyone notices. This piece is about redefining what strength means at work and what changes when leadership stops being measured by endurance.
Introduction
The last time someone called me “the calm in the storm,” I smiled like it was a compliment. I know better now.
Calm is currency in most offices. When everyone else is losing their heads, you keep yours, and the project, and the team, and the coffee supply. You absorb the tension, smooth the edges, and by the time the meeting ends, everyone’s breathing easier except you.
We call that strength. It’s really just insulation, and it makes you wonder what leadership might look like if it didn’t depend on how much one person can carry.
The Performance of Strength
There’s a version of strength that gets applause at work. She never raises her voice. She cleans up the group chat after someone else’s bad idea. She stays late because it’s “just easier if I handle it.” She’s reliable, self-contained, and eventually, running on fumes.
It starts as a survival skill. You build armor because calm is rewarded and boundaries are not. You learn that emotional labor is part of the job, even if it’s not in the job description. You are praised for going the extra mile, but measured only on the miles that make someone else’s dashboard.
This isn’t leadership. It’s quality control with better lipstick. But it helps explain how we built a system that rewards those who carry more, because carrying quietly keeps everything moving.
How the Myth Was Built
The pipeline data tell the story we already know. A Harvard Business Review analysis found women make up a large share of entry-level roles, then taper off at every level toward the C-suite. The message is subtle but familiar: there’s less room at the top and more proof required to stay there¹.
The kind of work we’re asked to do only reinforces the gap. Men get “hot jobs” tied to profit and visibility. Women get coordination, culture, and damage control. The important work that rarely turns into promotion. Even feedback feels different: warmer in tone, cooler in consequence.
If you’re told often enough that your value lies in keeping things running smoothly, you start mistaking endurance for influence. The question is: what might influence look like if we didn’t equate it with carrying the weight alone?
The Pandemic Test
Then the world caught fire, and women were handed the hose.
When offices went remote, women leaders carried much of what companies claimed to value most: well-being, inclusion, and empathy. We hosted the virtual check-ins, mediated the tension, and remembered birthdays. It was vital work, but invisible in metrics. Burnout rose, and the people doing the glue work paid the price².
Sociologists call this “invisible work.” It’s the labor that keeps systems stable but is mistaken for personality. Some organizations now compensate employee resource group leaders. That’s progress, though limited.
What the pandemic really proved is that resilience scales faster than recognition, and as long as we keep measuring leadership by how much people can shoulder, that imbalance will hold.
The Cost of Armor
Armor helps you get through the week. It also hides the cracks that warn you the structure’s off.
Burnout isn’t a personal flaw; it’s an organizational design flaw. HBR’s “Beyond Burned Out” names the usual suspects: too much work, too little control, low reward, weak community, bias, and values that don’t match reality³. These aren’t mindfulness problems. They’re management problems.
Meetings have multiplied, days have stretched, and “flexibility” often means working everywhere all the time. Add bias, and the numbers compound. Women are told to fight impostor syndrome, as if doubt, not environment, were the issue. But as HBR authors Malhotra and Burey point out, the real impostor is the culture that still makes belonging conditional⁴.
Armor helps us survive that culture. It also keeps us from reshaping it. And if leadership keeps meaning endurance, who’s left to imagine something better?
How to Lead Without Armor
Maybe leadership changes the moment we stop measuring it by weight carried. Leading without armor isn’t weakness. It’s precision. It’s deciding what matters and designing for it instead of absorbing it.
Name and compensate the glue work. Relational and DEI labor are leadership, not extracurriculars. Count them. Reward them².
Right-size the load, not the person. Shorter meetings, clear priorities, real breaks. Work that fits the day³.
Fix systems, not women. Audit who gets stretch roles and who gets thanked instead of promoted¹,⁴.
Treat empathy as infrastructure. Regular check-ins on workload and well-being are part of running the business³.
Redefine strength. True strength is clarity. Pair results with team health: retention, pace, equity¹.
These aren’t grand gestures. They’re operational sanity. And they point toward a different measure of leadership; one based on design, not endurance.
A Personal Note on Strength
If you’ve been called strong, you probably are. You read the room when no one else did. You steadied the ship while others took credit for smooth sailing. But the armor that once protected you may now be holding you in place.
Keep the parts that are truly yours: judgment, clarity, steadiness. Set down the self-protection that was only ever meant to be temporary.
Strength without armor sounds like this:
“This matters, and we’ll do it sustainably.”
“I’ll lead this, and here’s what comes off my plate.”
“My team can carry this, and it deserves recognition.”
These aren’t demands. They’re healthy leadership habits disguised as boundaries.
Organizations say they want boldness. Fine. Boldness looks like systems that don’t require heroics to function. When we reach that point, the calm in the storm won’t be a single woman holding it all together. It will be a team built to weather it together.
Maybe that’s the real measure of leadership: what happens when no one has to carry it all.
Try This Week
Small actions can build big cultural shifts.
Cancel one recurring meeting and explain why. De-scope one deliverable and note what changed.
Credit glue work publicly and record it in performance notes and promotion packets.
Block two quiet hours daily and protect them as fiercely as revenue targets.
Track who gets P&L stretch roles. Rotate visibility and sponsorship across difference.
Pair purpose with resourcing. Adjust scope so values and capacity actually match.
For Executives
Culture shifts when systems do.
Quarterly: People & DEI audit P&L stretch roles and publish distribution data.
Monthly: Finance reports meeting-load trends and retires low-value meetings.
Quarterly: HR and Ops link ERG and well-being work to formal goals and compensation.
Biweekly: Managers run workload reviews and log what will not be done.
References
Women in the Workplace: A Research Roundup. Harvard Business Review, September 2013.
Cooper, M. “Research: Women Leaders Took on Even More Invisible Work During the Pandemic.” Harvard Business Review, October 13, 2021.
Moss, J. “Beyond Burned Out.” Harvard Business Review, February 10, 2021.
Malhotra, R. T., & Burey, J.-A. “Stop Telling Women They Have Impostor Syndrome.” Harvard Business Review, February 11, 2021.
