We picture men in leadership roles. As a woman you already have this hurdle to overcome.”

Julie Fasone Holder, a corporate vice president for Dow Chemical, remembers a hallway conversation in the 1980s after she and another woman were promoted. A male executive said to Fasone, “I guess it’s women’s promotion week.” The way he said it, she says, “was I was being promoted because I was a women, not a great leader.”