Stereotypes of middle-aged women as less ‘nice’ can hold them back in their careers

AS A POPULAR tenured professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Jennifer Chatman was used to teaching at the top of her game. But as she entered her 40s and gained even more expertise, she noticed something strange: Her student class evaluations started getting worse.

“If anything, my teaching was getting even better, but students were harder on me,” she says. What’s more, when she spoke to her middle-aged female colleagues, she found that they were experiencing similar declines, while the men around them were not.