I recently looked up the number of women in Congress. Fewer than one in five legislators

are women. At Fortune 500 companies, fewer than one in twenty CEOs are women. And look at

all the presidents of the United States through Barack Obama. Now, I know there was a long

time when women couldn't be president, but if men and women had an equal shot at the White

House, the odds of having 44 presidents in a row all be men, about one in eighteen trillion.

What explains the dirt of women in top leadership positions? Is it bias, a lack of role models,

the old boys' club? Sure, but it goes deeper than that. Women are trapped in a catch

twenty-two, a paradox so deeply embedded in our culture that there are few means of escape.

And so it is really that very, very fine line between being a shrew on the one hand and

a puppet on the other that any woman in public life has to walk.

The puppet, the shrew, and the double-bind facing women who want to lead, this week on Hidden

Brain.

A few years ago, one of our listeners decided to switch careers.

So, my name is Deborah Metta, and I am a second year marketing student in an MBA program.

Deborah had been a successful teacher, but the business world appealed to her. She thought

she would be a good fit, so did the program to which she applied. She was awarded a

full scholarship. Soon, she was sharing the good news with an old friend.

We met for coffee one day, and she is very nice. I'm still really good friends with her,

but she said to me, I really can't see you in business. I think you're, you know, too

sweet for the business world. It was the beginning of a series of comments that undermined

her belief that she could be a leader or a manager. Later that year, Deborah's voice was

the problem, specifically her habit of ending sentences on a higher pitch.

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