Why are men and women treated differently in the workplace?

I did not set out to build an unfair company. I thought good intentions would be enough, that smart people would naturally reward merit, and that the best ideas would rise to the top. The illusion lasted until a product lead resigned and left behind a folder of feedback forms. I went through them in a quiet corner of our office and felt a steady discomfort grow. Women in our meetings were interrupted more often. Men were described as confident while women were described as having tone. Project leads were chosen by who spoke the loudest, not by who had done the most work. There was no scandal and no villain. There was drift. The team had slipped into old patterns because our rules were vague and our rituals were lazy.

I began to notice the small mechanics of that drift. When rules are unclear, people reach for quick signals. Loud often reads as leadership. Always available often reads as commitment. Direct to the point often reads as strength. These signals are not neutral. They reward those who already match the pattern and they ask those who do not to translate themselves before they can contribute. In a hurry, we gave out influence based on performance theatre instead of performance itself. Our calendar rewarded those who could stay late and join unplanned conversations. Our hiring language mirrored the last person who held the role, which often meant a man, because that had been the history of the industry. We did not plot this outcome. We simply failed to design against it.

In Southeast Asia, drift often hides behind politeness. We say we respect all voices, then we schedule the key decision meeting at nine at night because a senior leader prefers late discussions. We speak warmly about inclusivity, then we write job ads that ask for every possible skill and a history that looks very similar to the last successful man. We praise hustle, then conduct performance conversations in closed rooms with no clear rubric. The culture is conflict averse, so people try to smooth things rather than clarify them, and smoothing without clarity often protects the status quo. In those conditions, men tend to get earlier access to stretch work and to informal networks. The airport lounge chat that turns into a strategic project. The weekend group chat where the pitch deck is shaped. Comfort tilts toward similarity, and similarity begins to look like merit only because it is familiar.

The resume halo amplifies the pattern. A man who writes crisp bullets with strong verbs can read as battle tested. A woman who uses precise context and shares credit can read as support. I almost missed a remarkable head of sales because her resume contained none of the swagger that I unconsciously expected. In the interview she explained how she built a pipeline from nothing to seven figures across three countries, what repeated, what failed, and how she coached her team to survive a dry quarter. She had the scorecard. I was scanning for theatre. That day taught me that a meritocracy does not appear by proclamation. Merit needs measurement. Without a clear system, teams reward projection more than performance.

Access is the second engine of difference. In many companies the work that shapes narrative lives outside formal assignments. The first draft of the board deck. The investor prep call. The exploratory customer trip. These moments create visibility and credibility. When access is unplanned, it flows toward the circles that already exist. Those circles tend to be male, whether by habit or convenience. Over time the same names accumulate the kinds of experiences that later read as leadership. It then becomes easy to tell a story that sounds like merit when it is mostly about proximity.

Feedback posture is the third engine. I saw managers cushion feedback for women until it became vague. Vague praise and vague critique both slow people down. Growth needs specific behavior, a concrete example, and a time frame. Without that, the gap does not close, and because it does not close the manager assigns fewer high stakes projects. Protection turns into limitation. On the other side, men often receive sharper feedback earlier, which accelerates their development and increases their visibility. The outcome then looks like a difference in talent when it is actually a difference in calibration.

A sprint board finally drew the picture in a way I could not ignore. Our head of engineering showed me the distribution of tickets. Women owned many stability tasks that kept the system healthy. Men owned more exploration tasks and market facing items that created story and recognition. Stability kept the lights on. Exploration brought narrative and leverage. We had put some people on a treadmill and others on a runway. There was no conspiracy. There were only habits that had never been challenged and rituals that had never been written down.

The fix is not outrage. The fix is operations. A team needs rituals that make opportunity visible and repeatable. I started with language. We replaced vague notions of executive presence with plain behaviors that anyone could practice and anyone could observe. Prepare stakeholders before the meeting. Frame decisions with two options and one explicit tradeoff. Absorb blame and share credit. These phrases became the backbone of promotions and performance packets. In calibration meetings we asked whether we had seen the behaviors and where. When language became precise, bias lost oxygen.

Access needed a redesign. We mapped our high impact cycles, from product definition to quarterly planning to investor preparation and price changes. For each cycle we assigned a rotating shadow who would own the next round. We did not wait for volunteers. We rotated and documented. Two cycles later, our bench looked different. People who had never been in the investor prep room were suddenly confident in it. People who had never shaped pricing discovered that the work was partly analysis and partly choreography. The system produced access on purpose instead of by chance.

Meetings needed new math. In small teams, who speaks is who leads. We introduced a simple speaking order for decision meetings. The owner speaks first, the quietest voice speaks second, then the rest of the room. Interruptions are parked and the floor returns to the original speaker. It sounded mechanical on day one. By week six, the best ideas were still winning, but they were no longer trampled before they had a chance to breathe. People who had been holding back began to present frameworks and prework that moved the room faster than any strong voice could do alone.

Performance conversations moved from impression to evidence. We used a shared template with three parts. What you delivered. What changed because of that delivery. What you want to try next. Managers learned to give at least one direct, behavior level piece of feedback with a time frame. In the next two sprints, open kickoff meetings with the decision tree. In the next quarter, run the pricing council and publish the playbook. Specificity created momentum. People improved one visible behavior at a time, and the compounding effects showed up in their work.

The final operational shift was public narrative. Every quarter we listed three stretch projects that would shape the story of the team. We announced scope, support, and a clear success metric, and invited short pitches from anyone who wanted in. Instead of assigning these projects in hallways and group chats, we moved them into daylight. The practice taught pitching as a skill, surfaced new operators, and detached opportunity from proximity. It also taught leaders to define work crisply and to write down what support looked like in advance. When expectation is explicit, follow through becomes easier to measure.

There is a cultural layer that matters. In Malaysia and Singapore, leaders often worry that direct debate will feel like conflict. In KSA, leaders can carry heavy symbolic weight and their presence can silence a room without a word. The answer is not to import another country’s style wholesale. The answer is to design rituals that allow respect and clarity to live together. Start weekly meetings with a decision log that lists what was decided, what changed, and what is next. End monthly meetings with a learning loop that highlights a mistake, names the system failure, and proposes a change to the process. Frame these as craft. Craft travels across cultures better than slogans.

People ask whether targets are necessary. Targets can focus attention, but they can also hide lazy design. I prefer to change design first. Once rituals are real, track outcomes. Who is promoted. Who owns revenue moments. Who is coached. The numbers tell the truth only when the system is honest. If the same names appear in narrative projects every quarter, you have a design problem, not a talent problem.

I sometimes think about what I would redo if I could reset my early years as a founder. I would create a promotion rubric before the tenth hire. I would publish the behaviors that define leadership and review them in every all hands. I would make stretch projects open by default. I would coach managers to give feedback with verbs and timelines. I would stop praising late night heroics and start celebrating clean handovers. I would read the sprint board every month and ask one question. Who is getting runway, and who is keeping the lights on. Both types of work are essential. Only one builds a public story unless you design the narrative on purpose.

When people ask why men and women are treated differently at work, I now give a simple answer. Teams inherit patterns, and those patterns run the team unless leaders run the patterns. The work is not to lecture people into purity. The work is to change how decisions are made, how access is granted, how feedback is given, and how narrative work is assigned. Change your rituals and your outcomes will change. Keep your rituals vague and your outcomes will repeat.

If you are a founder with a fire burning on your desk right now, take one afternoon and do something small that matters. Write down the five behaviors that define leadership in your company. Share them at your next all hands. Tell people that these behaviors will appear in reviews. Then follow through. Everything else can grow from that single act. You will still move fast. You will just stop breaking the same people as you move.

Over time you will notice a quiet shift. Promotions will feel obvious rather than debated. Meetings will feel shorter because the right people speak at the right time. The shy product manager will present a launch plan that makes the room take notes. The same people will not own the spotlight every quarter. The company will begin to look like a place where talent converts into responsibility at the same speed for everyone. That is the victory worth chasing. It does not come from a poster or a campaign. It comes from a calendar full of better rituals and from leaders who choose structure over drift.