Priya had trained four of the seven people now senior to her.
She has counted. She knows the number. She knows their names, their gaps when they joined, the specific skills she sat with them over coffee and meetings and casual corridor conversations and helped them build. She was generous with her knowledge because she believed — she genuinely believed — that generosity creates ecosystems, and ecosystems lift everyone.
She is forty-four now. She has been at the Director level for six years. The VP roles that have opened in that time — three of them — have gone to men. Two of them she had mentored.
She is still at Director level. She is still generous. She has simply stopped believing that it will lift her.
She was generous with her knowledge. She has simply stopped believing that it will lift her.
The language used on her
Priya has been described, in performance reviews, as: collaborative, supportive, a team anchor, someone who brings out the best in others, a steady presence, deeply respected by her peers.
These are, she will tell you, beautiful words.
They are also the words used to keep a woman exactly where she is.
“Collaborative” means: she does not take up too much space. “Supportive” means: she makes others look good. “Steady presence” means: she will not leave, so we do not need to promote her to retain her. “Deeply respected by peers” means: her peers are not the people making this decision.
The men who were promoted above her were called: strategic, visionary, ready for the next level, someone who thinks like a leader.
Notice that none of these words describe anything they had done. They describe something they were assumed to be. The language of male leadership is predictive — we see in him what he will become. The language of female excellence is retrospective — we acknowledge what she has already given.
One looks forward. The other keeps you in place.
The language of male leadership is predictive. The language of female excellence is retrospective.
What the conversations actually sounded like
“We think you are not quite ready for a P&L role.” She had been managing an informal P&L for two years by then, without the title or the authority, filling in around the edges of a team that kept losing its head.
“We want someone who can really push the team.” The team, when surveyed, listed her as the manager they most trusted and would most want to work for.
“The timing isn’t right.” The timing was never right. The timing, she eventually understood, was not the variable.
She is not bitter. She would like you to know this. She is clear. There is a difference. Bitterness is hot and unfocused. Clarity is cool and precise. Clarity lets you see the mechanism without being consumed by it.
The mechanism, she has concluded, is simple: organisations talk about merit and practice familiarity. Leaders hire and promote in their own image. Their image, in most organisations, is still male. And so the merit of women becomes a separate category — something admired, something rewarded with kind words, something never quite translated into the power it has earned.
What she is choosing now
Priya has been approached by two startups in the last year. Smaller, younger companies where the people making decisions are less certain of what leadership must look like — and therefore more open to what it actually can.
She is considering. She has been considering for longer than she would like. Because leaving a place where you have invested sixteen years is not simple, even when the place has not invested in you equally.
In the meantime, she has changed one thing. She has stopped training people above her pay grade for free. The knowledge is still available. The coffee is still warm. But the structured mentorship — the hours, the frameworks, the strategy sessions that built other people’s VP careers — those now come with a conversation first.
“What are you going to do for me?” She has learned to say this. It did not come naturally. She practiced it, alone, in her car, until it stopped feeling aggressive and started feeling accurate.
She is forty-four. She has decades ahead of her. She is not done. She is not close to done.
She is simply no longer willing to be useful to a system that has no intention of being useful to her.
A question to sit with
Who built the ladder you are standing on — and do they know you know their name?
This story is part of the ‘Invisible at 40’ series on storyofsouls.com — a space for real voices, told with dignity. If this story is yours, or close to it, we invite you to share it. Write to us.
storyofsouls.com | Write to Heal
