Women and Power: Hard to Earn, Difficult to Signal, and Easy to Lose with Victoria Brescoll

Although women have made great in attaining positions of power in recent decades, there still remains barriers to women in not only continuing to attain these positions, but also in maintaining them. Women face different challenges than men in the quest for leadership roles and their ability to hold onto these positions. For women, power can still be hard to earn, difficult to signal to others (once power is attained), and, in certain circumstances, easy to lose. Gender stereotypes—our beliefs about what men and women are like—continue to shape our perceptions of women and can ultimately impede women’s progress in gaining, exercising, and maintaining power and leadership. My research on women and the precariousness of their power has examined women in top leadership roles (e.g., the United States Senate), experiments in the lab, and interviews with women who have managed to navigate the challenges of being in leadership positions. Speaker: Victoria Brescoll, WAPPP Fellow; Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale School of Management