Hitting my head on the glass ceiling

If you asked me 10 years ago whether sexism influenced my career, I would’ve said no. But now that I’m 20 years in, I can’t make that claim.

Engineering is male dominated. Leaders, fellows, award winners: almost all men. Textbooks? Every name a man. And not just men—white men.

But my career specifically? I didn’t get the whistles on job sites. No creepy jokes. People treated me professionally. Did clients sometimes second-guess my recommendations when they’d have taken them from a “John”? Sure. But I told myself I was too soft. Too quiet. I needed to be firmer. Rougher.

Except if I was firmer, rougher, more confident… suddenly I was “difficult.” “Hard to work with.”

I thought that meant I had to fix me. That I needed to “communicate better.” Except the feedback I got in reviews was always vague: “Work on communication.” No checklist. No SMART goals. No way to ever say: yep, nailed it, here’s your promotion.

Meanwhile, guys around me floated up the ladder with ease. Didn’t matter if they knew less. Didn’t matter if they botched projects. Didn’t matter if they dumped work on juniors and claimed the credit. Titles and money just… kept coming.

That wasn’t my path. I was flagged as a leader early. I was doing work above my pay grade: building systems that reshaped how firms functioned, mentoring staff, presenting nationally. Clients kept coming back. None of it translated into advancement.

Promotions were always “a little ways off.” Raises? We can’t afford it right now—here’s two percent.

Meanwhile, a male colleague could walk into the COO’s office, say, “I’m having a baby,” and walk out $10K richer.

All these decisions happened behind closed doors. I didn’t know what men were being told in reviews, or how they negotiated. What I do know: no one ever taught me how the game worked. I thought the right move was to take constructive criticism seriously, to own it, promise to do better. Turns out the “right” move is to externalize. Deflect. Call it misaligned priorities. Spin it into a new “leadership strategy.”

Why would I ever do that? Honestly, I wouldn’t. It’s bullshit. It doesn’t help the company. Doesn’t improve revenue, margins, or client relationships. But it does fit the mold of how (white, male) leaders behave. And it isn’t overt sexism—it’s baked into how we’re all socialized.

So here I am, 20 years in, stalled at Senior Consultant for over a decade. Principal? Elusive. Maybe impossible. Meanwhile, male counterparts—with less experience, less education—leapfrogged me. Higher titles. Bigger salaries.

I once discovered I was paid $10,000 less than a man I outranked. Found out only after he quit. And I didn’t sue. I was too drained. Too underpaid to fund the fight.

I’ve even worked under female CEOs who insisted they had to be the “only one.” They clawed their way up, then pulled ladder up behind them.

And then there are the everyday reminders. The other day I mentioned to a male colleague that my MacBook Air battery was dying, and my iCloud folders were multiplying like gremlins. His advice? Just buy a new MacBook Pro with four terabytes of storage. For him, pocket change. For me, months of saving.

That gap—that casual ease for him, the grinding calculation for me—is the crux of how sexism shows up in my career.

I used to think the glass ceiling was a myth. Something earlier generations fought through. But the absence of women in director and C-level positions is glaring.

It isn’t subtle. It isn’t abstract. It’s right there, solid, unyielding.

And my head hurts from bumping into it every damn day.

By Jen Calder - Meet our contributors.

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