The “have to” problem

I’m back on the job hunt again, which means I’m back in the familiar position of navigating bias in interviews and beyond, something I haven’t been able to outwork, out-maneuver, or out-negotiate1 at any point in my career.

Since working at (and being laid off from) big tech companies like Meta and Amazon as a content designer, I’ve watched the content discipline consistently lag behind other product roles in the rapidly developing tech space in how it’s valued (before and after the gen AI explosion2). And it’s hard not to notice that:

• A disproportionate percentage of content designers are women. Depending on the source, it’s somewhere in the 60–70% range.

• We make markedly less than our product design counterparts (out in the open as a too-bad-so-sad fact in my experience).

• When cuts started with the AI boom, we were first on the chopping block. When heads rolled during my layoff with Meta, the group Meta laid off was about 50% women even though we did not come close to making up 50% of Meta’s total workforce3.

It’s widely known that there are various factors that contribute to the wage gap, making it hard to truly quantify and combat. There are the big obvious factors: the motherhood penalty, [intersectional] discrimination and implicit bias, and social factors that start wreaking havoc on our collective view of women’s abilities from birth.

One of the lesser-discussed patterns that always sticks with me is that women are more likely to accept jobs below their market value, while men are more likely to hold out longer for higher-paying roles, often because the risks and penalties for doing so aren’t the same, the system doesn’t respond to those choices equally, and not everyone has the same ability to wait. In other words, women take what they can get because they have to for a multitude of reasons beyond their control4.

I think the “have to” is key. It’s naive to think we have any control over this systemic issue as individuals, which makes it all the more frustrating and hard to eradicate in our daily lives.

Being undervalued follows women around, even in male-dominated industries like tech:

As women’s participation in a particular occupation rises, pay within that occupation falls (Miller, 2016; Oldenziel, 1999). Some researchers attribute this phenomenon to “devaluation,” in which employers ascribe a lower value to work done in female-dominated occupations and thus pay them less (Levanon, England, and Allison; 2009).

We’re not as welcome anyway, and that takes a toll:

The distribution of men and women across occupations is not a simple matter of unconstrained choice. Much research suggests that many women are driven out of nontraditional occupations by hostile work environments. For example, 63 percent of women working in science, engineering, and technology experience sexual harassment. Over time, 52 percent of women in science, engineering, and technology quit their jobs, half of whom end up leaving these fields altogether (Hewlett et al, 2008).

We have to work harder to get as far, but even when we do, it’s not perceived the same:

Research on impressions of women in the workplace suggests women’s productivity might in fact be systematically underestimated. Women are caught in a paradox between appearing too feminine (not qualified) and not feminine enough (lacking in social skills), which often causes their performance to be evaluated much more strictly than men’s (Burgess, 2013)5.

So while women are evaluated on past performances (which are judged more harshly and attributed differently), men are evaluated on potential, coined as the “prove it again” bias in J.C. Williams and Rachel Dempsey’s 2014 book What Works for Women at Work.

We’re damned if we do and if we don’t, which affects our bag across the board.

And this is all if you even get the job and an equitable salary! The hiring process is rife with implicit bias, from the application process to the offer stage, proven out through research over and over again. We know that identical resumes receive different callback rates depending on the name at the top, before a candidate ever speaks to a hiring manager (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004)6.

And if candidates even make it through an initial screen, the whole process is tainted with that aforementioned “prove it” bias from the get-go: Men are given the benefit of the doubt about their abilities, evaluated on what they might become instead of what they’ve already accomplished, which often translates to higher starting salaries for identical work (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012).

Aside from being held to different (impossibly paradoxical) standards, women often get blamed for not asking for raises or more money, a tangible thing we’re all told to work on in our daily lives. Turns out, we actually do ask, but we’re penalized more and rewarded less than men. Women who negotiate are more likely to be seen as less likable or harder to work with, and can face real social and economic consequences for it (Bowles, Babcock & Lai, 2007).

There’s no one solution to the wage gap because it’s complicated and infinitely multi-factored, which is also the reason why many people dismiss it as a myth. Similarly I know that there’s no one reason I’ve faced interview bias and hostile work environments in tech in noticeably similar patterns. The tough part is that to address this bias or call out injustice means being viewed as an undesirable candidate. Who can afford to push back?

And that’s the rub: as a woman, I don’t have as many options or as much freedom to express myself without consequences. The “have to” problem is not about confidence or negotiation tactics or demonstrated skills as much as uneven constraints and implicit bias that butterfly-effects its way through women’s entire lives. So, so many butterflies. An exponential amount of effects.

Being back on the job hunt again, I’m already experiencing the heightened “have to” pressure. It shows up in what I ask for, what I accept, and what I decide not to push. Since it hasn’t changed since my last job search, that’s a good reason to keep naming it, over and over again, until it does.