When women push for more, backlash can hit

women asking – A series of negotiation attempts—inside startups, marketing careers, and publishing roles—shows a recurring pattern: women who ask for higher pay or better terms can be met with shame, lost offers, or being labeled a poor fit. Research cited in the report poin

Anna, 32, didn’t set out to become a test case. In her first job. she watched her responsibilities expand in small increments—“Hey. can you do this other thing too for a little bit?. It’ll be like 10% of your time.” The extra work didn’t stay at 10%. It turned into “basically doing a second full-time job,” she said.

When the workload finally felt impossible to ignore, Anna scheduled a meeting with her manager to renegotiate. She laid out what she’d taken on, how she was spending her time, and what her days looked like. “Can we renegotiate a salary to compensate me for the work I’m doing?” she asked.

The response wasn’t just a refusal. Her manager shamed her for asking. “You’re asking for more money? We’re a startup,” Anna remembers him saying—casting her demand as ungrateful, even though, in her telling, the company was asking her to perform the work of two people.

After that, the fight never really ended. Her boss promised bonuses and higher pay if she took on more obligations and work beyond her job title. Anna did the work. The raises never arrived. “It makes you feel crazy,” she said. “You’re getting feedback like, ‘This is how you get recognized and this is how you get rewarded.’”.

That gap between what she was told and what she received did something subtle but corrosive. “It starts to make you feel like, ‘Well, am I overasking?. Do I really deserve to make this amount?’ You’re fighting to get paid,” she said. “You feel like you’re getting there and you’re having the right conversations. but it’s kind of like spinning your wheels.”.

Anna’s experience is part of a wider reality explored in research on women’s negotiation outcomes: in many situations, the ability to “ask for more” is treated as a requirement for advancement, even as the same act can trigger penalties.

Jennifer Dannals and colleagues. in their paper “The Dynamics of Gender and Alternatives in Negotiation. ” analyzed results of over 2. 500 negotiators to understand why women typically experienced worse negotiation outcomes. The study found no evidence supporting the usual explanations—such as women being less assertive. negotiating less often. or negotiating less effectively. Instead. the researchers concluded that women were less likely to get what they asked for not because they weren’t being assertive. but because they were.

Dannals’s research links that outcome to patriarchal gender stereotypes. Women’s assertiveness. the paper argues. challenges expectations that women should be warm. compassionate. and loyal—rather than assertive. aggressive. or ambitious. The key trigger is framed as “patriarchal gender role ‘transgression,’” not the negotiation tactics themselves.

The double bind comes into focus when ambition is treated as both necessary and punishable. Researchers describe it this way: people are told to get ahead they need to be strong. bold. and assertive—traits aligned with patriarchal stereotypes of masculinity. particularly in individualistic cultures like those of the U.K. Australia. and the United States. But patriarchal stereotypes also require women to be nurturing, accommodating, and deferential—especially toward men.

So women can face backlash in either direction. If they show stereotypically feminine qualities, competence and leadership potential can be questioned. If they show stereotypically masculine traits, they risk being labeled unlikable, “not a team player,” or “not a good fit.”

Those biases concentrate where pay and power tend to concentrate. The research described notes that penalties are most common in roles and industries stereotyped as masculine—the sectors that often offer access to higher pay. greater autonomy. and more power. It also cites a 2020 paper studying women’s successes in male-stereotyped domains like STEM and finance: women arbitrarily assigned to leadership roles in those fields faced fewer penalties when they succeeded than women who actively pursued leadership positions. “So it was OK for women to successfully lead as long as they hadn’t actively aimed for the opportunity to do so.”.

That helps explain a sharper pattern sometimes described as an “ambition penalty.” When women are seen as aiming for a professional or leadership goal. the pursuit itself is resented—sometimes more than the eventual achievement. The report frames it as the “audacity” of women to raise their hand and put themselves forward.

The human costs show up when negotiations meet closed doors.

Carla described a moment of doubt after years of trying to transition into a marketing role. Her job offer was rescinded when she negotiated a bump in salary from $40,000 to $45,000 a year. “I did feel like Damn, should I have just left it alone?. Should I have not pushed hard on the salary?. I was definitely blaming myself,” she remembered.

Nadia, a publishing professional in her thirties, described a similar loss of leverage after interviews and reassurance. After four interviews—and being told she was everyone’s top choice—she was told. “It seems like actually. this isn’t a good fit for you. and good luck finding something else. ” after asking for a salary commensurate with her experience. “You feel stupid for thinking that you could negotiate. You feel worthless—like they really don’t value you at all. And that your work isn’t really worth anything,” Nadia said.

The report also pushes against the idea that women fail to advocate enough. It points to data that dispute that storyline. A 2018 paper titled “Do Women Ask?” found that women asked for raises as often as men did. Yet women were still less likely to receive them. “Our main finding—women do ask—holds in both large and small companies. and holds for women with and without advanced levels of education. ” the authors wrote. “While women do now ask they ‘don’t get.’”.

Caroline, a 26-year-old tech worker, put that frustration into plain language. After she asked to negotiate the salary and benefits, her job offer was withdrawn. “And yet we’re still getting told, ‘Just ask, just ask,’” she said. She added that she’d heard from three other women who described similar outcomes: the company either ghosted them or rescinded the offer.

The report’s argument lands on a central contradiction: encouraging women to advocate for themselves is not wrong. but framing it as a simple fix can hide how sexism and bias shape the consequences. It cites research that women receive more negative evaluations when they self-promote in job interviews—rated less likable and less worthy than those who do not. And the research suggests that backlash risk. not lack of confidence. can keep women from self-promoting at the same rate in the future.

In that telling, the key distinction is not whether women fear asking, but what happens after they do. The excerpt draws a line between personal reluctance and disproportionate punishment.

Excerpted from The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up—and Then Pushes Them Down. Copyright © 2026 by Stefanie O’Connell. The book is available from Basic Venture, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

women negotiation gender bias salary negotiations corporate culture ambition penalty workplace discrimination leadership stereotypes startups