Do We Have To Be Likeable?

Some thoughts on recent discussions of how women make it to the top

Thank you for your patience as I took the last two weeks off. They were both profoundly sad and joyful, so I needed some time to tend to myself. But I’m happy to be back to dive back into issues that affect women lawyers!

At my best I’m usually a warm and pleasant person. But even though that’s typically my natural disposition, I have always resented that, as a woman, I needed to be nice in order to succeed. I’m not saying that I want to be nasty all the time or be mean to people with impunity, but it’s exhausting to feel like you have to be nice, particularly in a profession that has more than its share of ugliness.

While likeability is, of course, appreciated in men in the workplace, it is required for women. For example, even though I don’t recall ever seeing a man do so, throughout my career I was repeatedly told to smile more during oral arguments. In addition, although I’m positive none of my male colleagues ever received similar feedback, nearly every one of my annual performance reviews contained a statement like “everyone likes you.” Conversely, I was usually told to deal with men who were as*holes, but I was never asked to accommodate a woman who was viewed as a b*tch. Indeed, I recall several times when a male colleague suggested I “go around” a woman who was viewed as difficult. I was hardly alone. Women are expected to be likeable.

Particularly since Kamala Harris entered the presidential race, the media has been filled with discussions about what—if anything—makes her different from Hillary Clinton. One of the answers frequently floated is that she’s simply more “likeable.” While Kamala Harris’ moment is understandably celebrated, every time I hear comments that praise her likeability, I wonder if we have really made progress towards the advancement of women. If Kamala Harris succeeds where Hillary Clinton did, will it largely be because she is perceived as nice?

In this week’s issue, we’re going to talk about likeability, and why we’re still talking about whether women in high places are likeable or not.

Women and Niceness

Before we talk about some of the contemporary discussions of likeability, let’s talk about why women chafe against instructions to be “likeable” or “nice.” Since we’ve been young girls, we’ve been socialized to be nice and to play well with others. Niceness is part of being nurturing, which women are expected to be. Boys are praised for achievements, while women are praised for maintaining relationships.

This phenomenon eventually plays itself out in the workplace as well. For women, the more competent you are, the less likeable you are to men. So we’re told to be “nice” so that we’ll be less threatening to men. As Mary Ann Sieghart explains in her book The Authority Gap, the secret sauce for women in powerful positions is warmth:

Women who use rapid, unhesitating and clear language, which is associated with competence, are less influential than men who communicate in the same way, but if women combine this with warmth, such a smiling and nodding, they become as persuasive as their male counterparts and more persuasive than women who show only competence. In general people who are communal are more liked, whether they are male or female. But because being warm and likeable is prescriptive for women, but not for men, likeableness leads to influence for women more than it does for men. In other words, a man can influence others even when they don’t particularly like him, but a woman generally has to be likeable f she wants to be influential and therefore command authority.

pp.134-5

While there’s a certain comfort in knowing that there is an “acceptable” way to women to exert influence, it’s depressing to think that, while men can be successful merely by being competent, women have to be so much more. And let’s face it: it’s exhausting to be warm all the time. Competence can be conveyed relatively quickly and easy, but warmth requires nearly constant observation so that people can discover who you “truly” are. As Sieghart quotes Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a former Dutch prime minister, as saying, “people said we can’t feel you, we can’t feel what kind of person you are,’ and those demands were just never, ever made of male prime ministers.” p.137 How many times have you heard media pundits say that the public needs to get to know who Kamala Harris is? This is rarely a request made of political candidates who are men.

A Likeable Badass?

Particularly in light of the recent discourse around Kamala Harris, I was intrigued to read a new book by Alison Fragale, PhD entitled Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve. The book has received almost universal praise and acclaim in feminist circles, and has blurbs from, among others, Sheryl Sandberg, Annie Duke, Amy Gallo, and Katy Kay. The thesis of her book is that, as the title suggests, the secret to gaining respect and status is to become a likeable badass. Importantly, the book is focused considerably more on being “likeable” than it is on being a “badass.” And that’s because, as the science Fragale cites concludes, women can’t be recognized as badasses unless they are likeable.

Fragale says that, while men can benefit from her advice, she wrote her book for women because she wants women to feel “optimistic, fierce, and inspired” knowing that there is a way to gain status. But while Likeable Badass contains some actionable advice that could certainly be helpful to women starting out their careers, I was never able to accept Fragale’s suggestions as empowering. Why? Because being a likeable badass all the time is not an easy thing. Admittedly, Fragale’s likeability is not superficial: she’s not advising women to be fake. But telling women to be “as Assertive and Warm as possible, as often as possible, to as many people as possible” (p.201) is impossibly hard, especially when Fragale makes clear that even doing what she suggests “won’t always be enough.” p.202. Indeed, Fragale repeatedly cautions against making “mistakes” in playing the status game and says things like we should act immediately when others gain false impressions of us.

It’s one thing to write a book about how being asked to be a “likeable badass” puts women in an impossible bind. It’s quite another to write a prescriptive text on how to fit into that impossible bind.

I was thinking about Alison Fragale’s book when I received Vivia Chen’s most recent newsletter in my inbox. It was titled “At Last, A Likeable Bitch!”, and asked how Kamala Harris had successfully dismantled Donald Trump during the debate without being described as shrill or bitchy. Chen suggests that Harris “performed magic” by projecting competence while remaining likeable. And then Chen asks whether we should be celebrating that, for women candidates to rise, they must engage in a “balancing act that would be unimaginable for men to perform.” I found myself firmly in Chen’s camp. ?

Should we really be celebrating that there is an impossibly narrow band into which women can squeeze themselves where they can be recognized for their own brilliance, especially where that impossibly narrow band takes incredible emotional energy and control? Isn’t it enough that we have to utilize our energy to deflect daily microaggressions—and look bemused and unbothered by them at the same time?

Concluding Thoughts

Unfortunately, the considerable research cited both in Sieghart’s The Authority Gap and Fragale’s Likeable Badass suggests that, yes, women do need to be likeable (read: warm and communal) in order to succeed. While all of us can surely point to singular women who do not fit this description yet have risen despite the odds, their success is the exception rather than the rule.

I do not find this research encouraging. It’s downright depressing. I just refuse to applaud that women now have a singular way to succeed when men have so many. We are, of course, entitled to take pleasure in the success that Kamala Harris or any other “likeable badass” has achieved. But can we not cheer simply because it’s no longer impossible for us to be recognized for what we’ve accomplished? Can we stop saying that because one of us has squeaked her way to the top that she is the model all of us much emulate?

I completely understand wanting to write a book that’s not completely despondent about how women can succeed in this world. I likewise understand wanting to find some hope in the incremental progress we see in the movement towards gender equity. But let’s start teaching workplaces how to recognize brilliance in women, no matter the package in which that brilliance comes. Let’s create spaces where the talents and personalities of women who make it to the top are as diverse as those of the men who do the same thing.

Let’s stop telling women that they must be likeable, until and unless we tell me they must do the same.

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