The Invisible Weight Women Bring Into the Workplace
- Jun 22
- 8 min read
Marya Kazmi is a Transformational Leadership Coach and educator who helps individuals and organizations to examine identity, unlearn limiting patterns, and build values-aligned leadership using reflective frameworks and community-centered practices.
"I had never considered that my disappointment mattered to anyone." I sat with that sentence at a point in my life when I was professionally depleted, and the behaviors I was showing up with had nothing to do with the job in front of me. I was mentoring a male colleague who was struggling with parts of his new role. In my pattern of overcompensating and overgiving, I stepped in more than I should have. I took the lead in meetings, carried the heavier cognitive load in planning and execution, and started to feel like I was driving while he sat beside me as a passenger.
Until I broke. The weight I had been carrying silently imploded, and it came out as harsh words toward him, questioning his effort and his desire to support me.
What I didn't see in that moment was how connected this was to the rest of my life. I was living through a divorce with a man who had failed to show up for years, while I raised three sons and watched the men in my life disappoint me at every turn. My frustration with my colleague, a man eager to grow but still struggling in the process, was never only about him. It was about every pattern I carried into that room and every belief I held about what men owed me in professional spaces.
When I finally named that connection out loud, he said something I had never heard from a man before, "Marya, I do not want to be the man who disappoints you. You do not deserve that."
That moment of truth, on both sides, changed how we worked together. We built a partnership that honored each other's strengths and needs instead of one person silently absorbing the gap.
Why this matters for women in leadership
Who we are doesn't get checked at the door when we walk into the office. We bring ourselves in fully, including the unspoken weight of what we're carrying while we perform competence on a team. The real pain points, the triggers, and the old patterns show up whether we name them or not.
This is the part of leadership we rarely talk about. We talk about systems, strategy, and communication breakdowns. We don't talk about what women carry into the room before the meeting even starts, the personal histories quietly shaping how we give, how we trust, how we hide, and whether we let ourselves be fully seen.
In my work coaching leaders and teams, I see this constantly, even when no one is naming it. A woman's history shows up in her demeanor, her interactions, and the way she carries her workload. Here are three of the most common invisible weights women in leadership carry, and what it looks like to finally set them down.
1. The overfunctioner, carrying everyone else's cup
Who she is
She's the first to notice when something is off. She picks up the slack before anyone asks. She stays late, overdelivers, takes the task no one else volunteered for, smooths the tension in the room, and sends the follow up email everyone else forgot. At home, she's the default parent and the emotional anchor. At work, she becomes the same person, indispensable, exhausted, and quietly resentful that no one seems to notice what she's carrying.
She doesn't ask for help, because asking feels like weakness. She doesn't delegate, because no one else will do it right. She doesn't say no, because saying no feels dangerous, like she might lose her value the moment she stops being useful.
This isn't only who she is at work. It's a life pattern that followed her into the office.
The pattern
Research shows women disproportionately carry emotional labor and nonpromotable tasks, the behind the scenes work that keeps an organization running but rarely advances a career or earns recognition. Beneath that workplace behavior is something deeper. Many women were never taught that their needs mattered, so they learned early that their worth lived in what they gave. They give, and give, and give, overfilling the cups around them while their own runs dry. Productivity becomes the proof of worth.
For women of color, this layer can run even deeper. Overperforming isn't just a habit, it can feel like a necessity for survival and recognition, the antidote a generation of women has been taught to use against being underestimated or stereotyped.
How it shows up
Never leaving a meeting without volunteering for something
Working through lunch while everyone else takes a break
Absorbing team conflict because the tension feels unbearable
Becoming the unofficial therapist, memory keeper, and emotional manager of the whole team
An inability to receive compliments, support, or rest, because receiving feels unfamiliar, even unsafe
Over time, the overfunctioner becomes invisible in a different way. Everyone depends on her, but no one truly sees her. When she finally burns out, the organization is shocked. They never saw it coming, because she made sure they didn't.
Remember what this pattern has cost you, not just in energy, but in identity. Who are you when you're not giving? Examine where the belief began. What did you learn about your worth, and what happened the last time you stopped giving? Unlearn the equation that your value is conditional on your output. Then reclaim what reciprocity actually feels like. Real partnership means your disappointment matters. Your depletion matters. Your needs matter. That isn't a luxury. That's the foundation of sustainable leadership.
2. The masked learner, performing competence in silence
Who she is
She reads the meeting agenda three times before she walks in. She rehearses what she'll say if she's called on. She takes longer to process written information than her colleagues, so she arrives early and stays late to compensate. When something is unclear in the meeting, she doesn't ask. She nods, then figures it out later, alone, at her desk, at ten at night, because asking would mean admitting something she's spent her whole career hiding.
She has a learning disability. Or ADHD. Or a processing difference that was never accommodated, only punished or ignored. She learned to perform competence so well that most people have no idea. That performance costs her everything.
The pattern
An estimated 88% of workers with non apparent disabilities hide them out of fear of bias, stigma, or simply not being believed. For women already navigating a workplace that scrutinizes their competence more closely, that fear carries extra weight. Disclosure can feel like handing someone one more reason to question whether she belongs in the room. So, instead of asking for what she needs, she masks it. She overcompensates. She works twice as long to produce what takes someone else half the time. The burden of masking, overcompensating, and absorbing the occasional microaggression takes a real emotional toll, one that compounds daily in silence.
How it shows up
Avoiding tasks that expose the gap, dense presentations, tight deadlines, and fast verbal processing in meetings
Deflecting when asked a question she doesn't immediately understand
Perfectionism that isn't ambition, it's armor
Disengagement that looks like attitude but is actually exhaustion
A polished performance of confidence so convincing that her team misreads her stress as coldness, her silence as arrogance, and her overwork as control
The breakdown happens in collaboration, because she can't be fully present in a dynamic she's simultaneously trying to manage and hide.
Remember that what you've been hiding isn't a deficiency. It's a difference that was never met with the right support. Examine what the masking has cost you, the relationships you couldn't fully enter, the ideas you didn't voice, and the rooms where you shrank. Unlearn the belief that your difference makes you less capable. In many cases, it's made you more resourceful, more empathetic, and more tenacious than you've ever been given credit for. Then reclaim your right to name what you need. In a culture that's genuinely safe, disclosure becomes possible. When women in leadership are brave enough to name their invisible needs, they give everyone around them permission to do the same.
3. The guarded collaborator, when trust has already been broken
Who she is
She's in a brainstorm. Ideas are flying. She has one, a good one, but she holds it back. Last time she shared something like it, a colleague took it further in the next meeting and got the credit. Before that, she was vulnerable with a leader who used her honesty against her in a review. She's learned that openness is a risk she can't always afford, so she gives enough to look engaged without giving enough to be exposed.
She isn't disengaged. She's defending. Most people in the room don't know the difference.
The pattern
When trust breaks down, people withhold information, hold back input, and avoid collaborating. Innovation suffers without the open exchange of ideas. What workplace research often misses is that broken trust rarely starts at work. It starts in life. The woman who was gaslit by a former manager carries that wound into her next role. The leader whose ideas were dismissed in rooms where she was the only one who looked like her brings that history into every meeting after. A culture where people feel undervalued and reluctant to collaborate didn't appear out of nowhere, it has roots. Until those roots are acknowledged, the pattern repeats.
How it shows up
Withholding in meetings, sharing less than she actually knows
Reading neutral interactions as threats
Interpreting constructive feedback as criticism
Pulling back from mentorship or sponsorship because the last one cost her something
Micromanaging her own team because control feels safer than trust
Being labeled "difficult" or "closed off" when she's actually protecting herself from something real that already happened
The breakdown in collaboration isn't a personality problem. It's an unhealed response to a pattern of not feeling safe.
Remember that your guardedness made sense. It protected you when you needed protection.
Examine specifically what broke your trust and what you have carried since. The goal is not to become naive again. It is to unlearn the belief that every room is as unsafe as the one that hurt you.
Transform the dynamic, both internally and by advocating for cultures that earn trust through transparency and accountability. Finally, nurture trust as it rebuilds slowly through consistent evidence. You deserve relationships, professional and personal, where your disappointment matters, where your ideas are protected, and where your full self is not a liability.
Being present with our full selves
Not long ago, I sat with a team in a dialogue where the old wounds were finally named out loud. I watched the shift happen in real time, in body language, in tone, and in the way people started speaking to each other with curiosity instead of accusation. Nothing was suddenly perfect. They were just finally honest.
That honesty is the foundation. When women are given the room to set down what they have been silently carrying, collaboration changes. People show up with more of themselves, not less.
That is what healing organizational culture actually looks like. Not a new policy. Not a team building exercise. It looks like someone brave enough to name the elephant, and a leader skilled enough to hold that moment with care.
That is the work and it can begin when we create space to speak on the unspoken.
Read more from Marya Firdausi Kazmi
Marya Firdausi Kazmi, Transformational Leadership & Identity Coach
Marya Kazmi is a Transformational Leadership & Identity Coach and educator who helps individuals and organizations examine identity and cultivate values- aligned leadership. Her work is shaped by lived experience and years of professional practice, informing the reflective tools she created to support healing, clarity, and growth. She is the creator of the RETURN framework, which guides people through a process of unlearning, reconnection, and coming home to themselves. Marya is also the executive producer and host of Pain to Power, a talk show exploring leadership, healing, and human-centered change. Her work bridges lived insight with practical strategies, inviting others into a healing evolution rooted in self-trust, belonging, and purpose.
