Why Great Women Still Get Overlooked at Work

A 2025 study published in Experimental Economics found that women were up to five times less likely to self promote than men in the same scenario, largely due to concerns about how they would be perceived. That matters more than most people realise, because in the workplace, visibility shapes opportunity.

Most professionals are told early in their careers that hard work leads to recognition. That may be true at the beginning, but it breaks down at mid and senior level. Hiring managers are not inside your role. They do not see the nuance of your day to day work or the decisions you make. They rely on how clearly you communicate your value. If that value is not obvious, it is very easy for it to be missed. Research in organisational psychology consistently shows that self promotion and visibility influence performance evaluations, promotion decisions, and salary outcomes. At the same time, people who understate their achievements are more likely to be underestimated, regardless of how strong their performance actually is.

There is also a deeper layer to this. The same study links lower levels of self promotion in women to social norms around modesty. This is not new. Earlier research has shown that women are more likely to downplay their achievements and may even face social penalties when they are perceived as too self-promotional. This creates a difficult balance. Be too quiet, and your work goes unnoticed. Be too direct, and you risk being judged for it. Most people respond by softening their language. They talk about effort instead of outcomes, credit the team before explaining their own contribution, and remove anything that feels too direct. From the outside, this often reads as lower impact.

You can see this pattern across the entire hiring process. CVs are filled with responsibilities rather than results. LinkedIn profiles describe roles but do not position value. Interview answers explain what was done, but not what changed as a result. Promotion conversations mention achievements without context or scale. None of this reflects a lack of ability. It reflects a gap in how that ability is translated.

There is also a misconception that self promotion means being loud or overly confident. That is not what hiring managers are looking for. They are looking for clarity. What problems have you solved, what decisions have you influenced, what outcomes have you driven, and what changed because of your work. The same research offers an interesting insight here. When participants were given a socially acceptable way to explain their actions, women were significantly more likely to self promote and the gender gap disappeared. This suggests the issue is not capability or even willingness. It is how safe and acceptable it feels to communicate impact.

The long-term effect of this gap is significant. It compounds over time. Data from McKinsey and Lean In shows that women are already less likely to be promoted into early leadership roles, which reduces representation at senior level. When that is combined with lower visibility, the effect becomes even stronger. Less visibility leads to fewer opportunities, fewer opportunities lead to slower progression, and slower progression reinforces the perception gap. It is not one moment that creates the issue. It is the accumulation over time.

The current market makes this even more pronounced. There are more candidates than roles across many parts of EdTech. Hiring teams are making quicker decisions, often with limited information. That means positioning matters more than ever. Strong candidates are being overlooked not because they are not good enough, but because they are not clear enough. If a hiring manager has to work hard to understand your value, they usually will not.

There are two sides to solving this. For professionals, the shift is from describing work to explaining impact. That means being more specific, more outcome focused, and more deliberate in how experience is communicated. For companies, there is also a responsibility. If hiring and promotion decisions rely too heavily on confidence, presentation style, or who speaks the loudest, strong talent will be missed. Structured interviews, clear evaluation criteria, and a focus on evidence over delivery all help reduce this gap.

This is exactly where we see the biggest shift at RecruitHer. Not in people’s experience, but in how that experience is positioned. Most of the professionals we work with already have strong examples. They just have not translated them into language that hiring teams recognise. Once that changes, the response changes. More interviews, better conversations, and stronger alignment. The market is not only looking for talent. It is looking for talent it can understand quickly.

The research is consistent. Self promotion influences how people are perceived, modesty norms influence how comfortable people feel doing it, and that gap affects career outcomes. This is not about becoming someone else. It is about making your impact easier to see. Because doing great work matters, but being understood matters just as much.

References

Mancuso Tradenta, J., Neelim, A., Vecci, J. (2025)
Gender differences in the self promotion of prosocial behaviour
Experimental Economics
https://doi.org/10.1017/eec.2024.7

Rudman, L. A. (1998)
Self promotion as a risk factor for women
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Moss Racusin, C. A., Rudman, L. A. (2010)
Disruptions in women’s self promotion
Psychology of Women Quarterly

Exley, C., Kessler, J. B. (2022)
The gender gap in self promotion
Quarterly Journal of Economics

McKinsey & Company and Lean In (2023)
Women in the Workplace Report

‍