“ I felt tacit pressure to smile ”

During a meeting at his office in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the 24 -year -old faith suddenly became nervous – reluctant to be perceived as difficult in a part of the world who does not like young women of opinion.

It had started quite pleasantly. Faith, whose name was changed to protect his identity, had conscientiously laughed at bad jokes made by her patterns.

But then a senior colleague suggested that she believed that he did not work practically. But before Faith could express her opinion, her colleague mentioned his name.

“And Faith agrees with me!” The others in the meeting room turned to face him when his colleague added: “You agree, right?”

Faith did not agree, but I felt under pressure: “I didn’t want to be considered difficult or in a bad mood.

“I felt tacit pressure of smiling, to be pleasant, not to disturb,” she told me.

At that time, she was two years after her first job in a desired company and among the first women of the generation of her family to go to university – she had so much more than she wanted to realize.

“How can I progress if I start to disagree with colleagues on such a junior scene?” she asked.

Faith is aware that it faces what a Women in the Workplace 2025 report, which focuses on India, Nigeria and Kenya, calls “the broken scale”. This refers to an important barrier on the scale of the company which has experienced a sharp decline in the representation of women between entry -level and management roles.

Published in May by McKinsey, the Management Council for the first time extended its annual research beyond North America and found that in these three major development economies, women remain considerably underrepresented in management positions.

In Kenya, women represent 50% of entry -level roles in sectors such as health services and financial services, but that drops only 26% at higher levels. The model is similar to Nigeria and India.

Faith did not challenge his colleague at the meeting. She smiled and said nothing.

There is now a term for his experience – experts call him “work of sympathy”.

“(This) is a really fun name for an incredibly depressing reality,” said Amy Kean, sociologist and head of the Good Shout communication consulting firm, who invented the term.

“He refers to the women’s constants of the second, paranoia, paranoia, change of shape and masking every day to be appreciated in the workplace.”

Study based in the United Kingdom of Ms. Kean – Shapeshifters: what we do to be appreciated at work – which also released in May, indicates that 56% of women feel the pressure to be sympathetic to work, against only 36% of men.

Based on a survey of 1,000 women across the United Kingdom, the report also highlights how deeply rooted and unequally distributed.

This details how women often feel the need to soften their discourse using language minimization, even when confident in their point.

Current sentences include: “Does it make sense?” Or “Sorry, just quickly …”

This type of constant self-publishing, explains Ms. Kean, can act as a defense mechanism to avoid being considered abrasive or too asserted.

“There is also a class element to that,” she adds, in reference to the United Kingdom. “Women in the working class, who are less used to adjusting themselves in different contexts, are also accused of being direct and also suffering in the business world.”

For many women who are not used to defending themselves in their personal environment, the issues go beyond adaptation or to be very appreciated.

“It’s not as simple as being popular, it is a question of being safe, heard and taken seriously,” adds Ms. Kean.

Earlier this year, she organized a summit in London for women feeling work pressure such as sympathy, entitled an unmanageable woman. More than 300 women showed up to share their experiences.

British study is not an aberrant value. Sociologists say that the pressure that women feel to be sympathetic in order to progress professionally is a global trend.

A 2024 study by the Recruitment Company based in the United States, Textio, supports it. By analyzing the data of 25,000 people in 253 organizations, he found that women were much more likely to receive comments based on personality and that 56% of women had been labeled “unlikely” in performance journals, a criticism only 16% of men received.

Men, on the other hand, were four times more likely than other sexes to be positively labeled as “sympathetic”.

“Women are doing a job of sympathy for a mixture of social and cultural reasons,” said Dr. Gladys Nyachieo, sociologist and lecturer at the multimedia university of Kenya.

“Women are generally socialized to be careful, to serve and to put the needs of others before them and this invariably transfers to the workplace,” explains Dr. Nyachieo.

“There is a term for this in Kiswahili – ‘Office Mathe’ – or the mother of the office.”

The Mathe office makes additional workforce to maintain workplace operation, including manufacturing tea, purchase of snacks and generally service.

I ask what is wrong with that if that’s what a woman wants to do.

“There is nothing wrong with that,” said Dr. Nyachieo. “But you will not be paid for it. You will always have to do your job, and maybe additional work.”

Dr. Nyachieo believes that to combat the work of sympathy, systemic changes must occur at the root, including the implementation of policies that allow women flexible hours and have mentors that defend them.

She herself mentors several young women who start just on the workforce of Kenya.

“I take the mentorship of young women very seriously,” said Dr. Nyachieo. “I tell them:” If you act pleasantly all the time, you will not go anywhere. You must negotiate for yourself. “”

One of his mentions is faith.

“She taught me not to feel pressure to be smiling and kind all the time,” said Faith.

“I work on it.”