In 2022, I was recruited away from a senior innovation role in healthcare for an executive position at Microsoft. I wasn’t looking for a job, but the recruiter was persistent, and eventually I agreed to interview.
The process took weeks. I met with numerous leaders, gave presentations, and went through what felt like every conceivable interview. By the end, I was told I was the top candidate.
Then my would-be manager said something I’ll never forget.
He said, in a reassuring tone, he was certain I would get the job because the company was “looking to check the diversity box.” I was stunned.
I had a Cornell undergraduate degree, an MBA from UCLA, more than twenty years of executive experience, and was well known on the industry speaking circuit. It was wildly qualified for the job. And, remember – they reached out to me.
The comment wasn’t just insulting- it immediately changed how I viewed the opportunity. Whether he intended it or not, he had framed my candidacy as something other than merit.
I declined the offer.
I never found out whether he thought he was being honest, manipulative, or simply careless. I only knew that I had no interest in working for someone who chose those words at the very moment he was asking me to join his team.
I’m sharing this not because it’s the most egregious example of sexism I’ve encountered, but because it’s one more paper cut in a career full of them. Individually, they’re easy to dismiss. Collectively, they become the background noise of being a woman in corporate America.
We are expected to thread an impossibly small needle: confident but never threatening, decisive but always agreeable, accomplished but somehow still humble enough to make everyone else comfortable. And even when we clear every one of those hurdles, our accomplishments are still too often explained away by anything other than merit.
It’s 2026. The remarkable part isn’t that this happened. The remarkable part is how ordinary it still is. If you want to get really depressed about how bad things are, read Stefanie O’Connell’s excellent new book Ambition Penalty.