The Mental Tax of Being a Woman

You've heard of the pink tax for goods and services, but this is something else...

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, I am thinking about the great women we featured this month…here:

03/06/25 Conversationality: Three women to follow right now.

And here:

How She Did It: Companies Built for Women, by Women

And here:

[GUEST] What Does Community Care Look Like in an Anxious Generation? by Minaa B

But I’ve also been thinking about the mental tax you pay when you are not a part of the dominant micro-culture…at work, at school, in your neighborhood, and so on. I say mental tax because it’s a portion of your mental bandwidth you contribute to managing your experience living outside the dominant micro-culture.

Just like taxes, that mental bandwidth is gone…you have a certain amount of bandwidth, and you have to carve out a percentage of it to pay your tax. Unlike taxes, you can’t point to how exactly you benefit from having paid it.

Also, just like taxes, you may occasionally wistfully wonder: What more could I do if I was able to keep more of my mental energy focused on my goals and my objectives and my aspirations?

We’ve all heard the now-debunked myth that humans only use a fraction of our brains. Turns out we’re using our whole brain all the time…it’s sucks up an incredible amount of our body’s energy. So it’s frustrating to imagine how much of it we expend navigating how others react to who we are in the world.

Make no mistake, this mental tax is paid by other people in other circumstances, not just women. And we all pay some level of this tax if we want to operate with empathy in the world. But for now, let me point out the three examples that leapt to mind without having to reach for them when thinking specifically about my experience and the experience of so many women I know:

1. The Goldilocks syndrome

The Goldilocks Syndrome is my name for the effort that goes into striking just the right tone when it comes to almost every leadership quality. In other words, if you’ve spent time deciding how to be neither too much nor too little, but juuuust right, you’ve been caught in The Goldilocks Syndrome. Somewhere on the spectrum from passive to aggressive lies appropriately assertive. Somewhere on the spectrum from acquiescent to argumentative lies just the right amount of healthy debate. Somewhere on the spectrum from too in-the-weeds to too head-in-the-clouds lies just the right balance of operator and visionary. Sometimes it’s about factors you can’t even control, for example: Somewhere on the spectrum from too young to be taken seriously to too old to be taken seriously lies the perfect age (when you figure that one out, let me know). Constant calibration like that can so easily erode your confidence.

2. The Intention vs. Impact Conundrum

We’ve all been in a situation when someone says or does something, and you feel a disorienting lack of clarity about what it means. It could have been basically harmless…they didn’t mean anything by it, and in fact, it doesn’t have any impact. I’ve been called in by a friend, on more than one occasion, for using a well-worn phrase that, as it turns out, has a less-than-savory origin. I’m always super glad to learn of it and to change my future verbiage. I’m always very grateful that someone took the chance to share what they knew about the word or phrase, hopefully because they figured I would want to learn and to change. I try to give the same benefit of the doubt to people I know and assume they have used outdated phraseology without harmful intent and without real negative impact on me. On the other hand, I’ve also had people make what I would learn were backhanded compliments…gushing about how young I looked or asking about my skin-care routine, as two examples…in order to make me feel or make others think I was inexperienced. Finally, I’ve had colleagues make passes or get handsy or utter unmistakable innuendos. Any time you feel that disorientation, you are expending mental energy deciding…where does what I just experienced fall on the harmless-to-microaggression-to-subtly undermining-to-full-on-problematic spectrum? Then, on deciding how to handle it, perhaps on the ignore-to-push back subtly-to-address privately-to-full-on escalation spectrum. It’s just a lot. And it happens too frequently.

3. The Discount You Didn’t Ask For

Perhaps the most pervasive and demoralizing example of all: I used to call it the Woman Discount…on your fundraising, on your valuation, on your exit, on your salary, on the value of your work. The data on how this happens systemically is clear. The need to be on high alert for it individually is tiring. And then to decide how to push back on it…without doing too much or too little (see Goldilocks Syndrome above)…seems like a no-win dilemma. There are many resources about negotiation, and then there’s a whole other genre about negotiation for women. Because it’s not the same…true, even if unfair.

Gah, why am I ending Women’s History Month on what might feel like a lowlight?

Because

Jory Des Jardins

and I created Optionality to help reduce that mental tax and mental load for everyone seeking to prepare for, execute on, and continuously improve an optionality-driven life.

This conversation feels like a bridge between our recent conversations about mutual support and community care and our upcoming theme for April: energy management, boundaries, and self-care.

I hope you will share where you are paying a mental tax. I hope you will share the mental tax you pay if you’re not a woman. If we care about not just optionality but empathy, too, then we’re all spending mental bandwidth trying to integrate those principles into our work and our life.

Let’s talk about it.

Join Optionality’s Premium membership and join or start a working group. For example, our Personal Positioning working group. It all started when a member said, “I need to update how I talk about myself and my work. I’m great at helping others do that, but suck at doing it for myself.” When half a dozen members chimed in to agree they were the same, a working group was born. Each group member gets support from the others in turn. Transforming CVs, LinkedIn profiles, one-sheet service offerings, new business positioning statements, and more.

Check out that and other member benefits and upgrade today!