S2 E3: Body Language is Gendered
Think about how you’re sitting right now. Are your legs crossed? Shoulders pulled in? Are you taking up half a seat or a full one? Are you making yourself smaller than you need to?
Now think about whether you were ever taught to sit that way. Or whether you just... absorbed it.
In Episode 3 of Season 2, Hema and Mike get physical - literally. Because the gender conditioning we’ve been unpacking doesn’t just live in what we say or don’t say. It lives in our bodies.
Women are taught to sit with legs together, make themselves neat and contained, smile even when they don’t feel like it, and never stand with hands on hips because it “looks aggressive.” Men are taught to spread out, take up room, hold eye contact, and expand. Nobody said any of this out loud - it came from watching, from being corrected as children, from figuring out what version of yourself made other people most comfortable.
The consequences are real. Open posture reads as confident and authoritative. Contracted posture reads as uncertain or subordinate. And women who adopt expansive body language are often judged as aggressive or intimidating - the exact same posture that’s rewarded in men. There’s a double standard built into the perception, and most of us have absorbed it without ever noticing.
For executive women, this creates a specific and exhausting double bind: be more assertive, then get penalized for it. Own the room, then get called difficult for it. The answer isn’t to shrink back down. It’s to lead so clearly and consistently that your presence becomes undeniable rather than threatening.
Your body language is not neutral. It was shaped - by gender, by upbringing, by watching who was rewarded and who was corrected. You don’t have to perform anything. But you’re allowed to take up the space you’re actually in.