If we want to balance out leadership roles in the workplace, we have to balance out responsibilities in the home. - Sheryl Sandberg

Our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in a double bind,” she said. “We believe not only that women are nurturing, but that they should be nurturing above all else. When a woman does anything that signals she might not be nice first and foremost, it creates a negative impression and makes us uncomfortable.”7 If a woman is competent, she does not seem nice enough. If a woman seems really nice, she is considered more nice than competent. Since people want to hire and promote those who are both competent and nice, this creates a huge stumbling block for women. Acting in stereotypically feminine ways makes it difficult for women to reach for the same opportunities as men, but defying expectations and reaching for those opportunities leads to being judged as undeserving and selfish.

Professional ambition is expected of men but is optional — or worse, sometimes even a negative — for women. “She is very ambitious” is not a compliment in our culture.

Part of every misery,” C. S. Lewis wrote, is “misery’s shadow…the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.