Part 2 of 2
You made the decision on Monday. By Friday, it's been "socialised" with people who don't report to you, and it's comes back slightly changed. Nobody said the decision was wrong. It just wasn't final until someone else agreed.
In Part 1, I wrote about senior women leaders being respected in the room and still not being acted on. This is the second half of the same problem. Being heard is one part. Being trusted to lead is the other.
This isn't in your head
In 2016, Yale researchers Andrea Vial, Jaime Napier and Victoria Brescoll brought a large body of research together into one model of what happens once a woman holds a leadership role.
It starts with the difference between power and status.
Power comes with the role.
Status is the respect and admiration the people you lead choose to give you, and it's what makes them willingly go along with your decisions.
Drawing on the research, they argue that women in leadership roles have a harder time being granted that status than men in the same roles. Their authority is more likely to be treated as less legitimate.
None of this starts with the woman. It starts with long-held expectations about who looks like a leader.
There's a cycle women leaders can get caught in
What happens next is the part many women will relate to.
When a leader feels her authority isn't being accepted, she can start leading differently. She'll be more cautious, monitoring how she's perceived and focused on avoiding mistakes. This changes how she shows up.
The research they review points to two common responses. She either pushes harder and becomes more directive, or she pulls back and softens.
Both of these responses can cost her more legitimacy, and so the pattern spirals downwards. They call it a self-reinforcing cycle of illegitimacy.
It's frustrating, it's tiring, and it's why many women don't relish the idea of going into senior leadership at all.
Legitimacy comes down to who gets backed
September 2026 research from La Trobe University shows where this starts. Dr Huong Nguyen and Professor Suzanne Young interviewed ethnically diverse women managers, along with organisational leaders and industry stakeholders, in two ASX200 organisations in financial services and healthcare.
They found a clear gap between competence and legitimacy.
Women's capability was recognised and relied on, without being turned into recognition that they were ready for more. One woman described senior leaders who knew she was "operating at a GM level" and kept handing her extra work. Yet when the opportunity came up, she "wasn't even considered."
An industry stakeholder described capable women as "stuck being competent."
What turned capability into progression was backing.
Sponsors and senior advocates who vouched for someone, put her name forward and opened doors were the ones converting competence into opportunity. At senior levels, one participant said, the criteria become "very fluid" and "less objective." Another put it simply: "Typically you have to be known."
These findings are specific to ethnically diverse women, who face these barriers compounded by cultural norms about who looks and sounds like a senior leader. Many women will recognise parts of it, but that doesn't make the experience the same.
The researchers' recommendations are aimed squarely at organisations. Feedback like "not ready" or "lacking executive presence" should come with evidence. Sponsorship should be an accountability that leaders hold, not an informal favour that depends on who feels familiar.
Organisations clearly have real work to do, which is why the La Trobe study matters: its advice is practical.
Systemic change is glacially slow
Globally, though, systemic change is glacially slow. The latest Gender Snapshot from UN Women and UN DESA found only one in seven countries is led by a woman, and at the current rate, gender equality is 171 years away.
Until there is change at the organisational level, women leaders will continue to carry a huge burden.
As Vial and her colleagues note, earlier research shows women often have to work harder than men to establish and hold an image of competence.
The facts are these: it isn't fair. It's also the current reality, and waiting for it to change is costing women opportunities in their careers right now.
How can women leaders build greater legitimacy sooner?
So the practical question is how women can build a greater sense of legitimacy sooner, without waiting for organisational change.
In my work with senior women, it comes down to five capabilities.
Inner Authority. The cycle spirals downwards when a leader starts leading from caution and second-guessing herself. Building a deeper sense of what I have termed Inner Authority is where it starts. It means knowing your value and backing your judgement before anyone else does, so that a challenge to your decision doesn't become a challenge to your right to make it.
A clear value proposition. Can you say in one sentence what you're the person for, and are you clearly sharing your successes? Respect builds when success is attributed to you, and that's far easier when people already know what you bring.
Presenting and holding an argument. Making a recommendation is one skill. Holding it when it's tested is another. It means structuring a case that stands on its own, anticipating the pushback, and answering any challenges calmly, without reopening the whole decision.
Reading the power dynamics in the room. Every meeting has its own dynamics: who speaks first, whose view the room waits for, where the real decision gets made. Leaders who read those dynamics can shape them. The rest end up reacting to them.
Being known beyond the room. The La Trobe research said it: "Typically you have to be known." Thought leadership is how this happens with intention. As a leader, it's vital to hold a clear point of view on your field and express it consistently, so senior people know your thinking before your name comes up. This also makes sponsorship easier to earn, because people back what they can see.
This is how you make authority you already have visible and hard to question, so you're trusted in your leadership and can make the impact you desire
These are the capabilities I equip women to build, so they become the one people call first in their field, and stay there.
Which of these has your role tested most?
Sources
Vial, A. C., Napier, J. L., & Brescoll, V. L. (2016). A bed of thorns: Female leaders and the self-reinforcing cycle of illegitimacy. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(3), 400–414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.12.004
Nguyen, H., & Young, S. (2026). The ecology of exclusion: How Anglo-male cultural logics reproduce unequal leadership progression for ethnically diverse women. Gender, Work & Organization. Open access.
UN Women & UN DESA (2026). Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2026.
McClean, E. J., Martin, S. R., Emich, K. J., & Woodruff, T. (2018). The social consequences of voice. Academy of Management Journal, 61(5), 1869–1891. (Part 1)