Women at Work with Fexingo: Gender, Leadership, and Career Conversations for Women

Lucas and Luna explore a growing body of research showing that standard performance-review formats inadvertently penalize women — particularly in collaborative or team-oriented roles. They walk through a 2024 study of 15,000 reviews at a Fortune 500 tech firm, where women received 2.5 times more negative feedback on 'teamwork' than equally rated male peers, despite identical productivity metrics....

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore a quiet but persistent career barrier: the referral gap. Research shows that men are 30–50 percent more likely to receive an internal referral for a promotion or high-visibility project than equally qualified women. Lucas breaks down the numbers from a 2025 McKinsey study of 800 managers, explaining how informal networks—golf outings, late-night Slack chats,...

Women leave the tech industry at a 45 percent higher rate than men, and new research pins much of the blame on a cumulative burden called the 'microaggression tax.' In this episode, Lucas and Luna unpack a landmark study from the Kapor Center that tracked 1,200 women engineers over three years. They zero in on one specific finding: women who experienced at least five microaggressions per month wer...

In this episode of Women at Work with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna tackle the under-discussed confidence gap that hits many women when they return from maternity leave. They dissect a 2024 study from McKinsey showing that 43% of returning mothers feel less self-assured in meetings, even when their performance metrics are unchanged. Lucas brings in the concept of 're-entry shock' and contrasts it with t...

Lucas and Luna explore the mid-career mentorship cliff that many women face — the moment when informal sponsorship and guidance drop off, just as advancement decisions are made. They look at data from a 2024 LeanIn. Org and McKinsey study showing that for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 87 women are promoted, and the gap widens at senior levels. The episode drills into one specific mechani...

Lucas and Luna unpack the research on why women are less likely to negotiate starting salaries — and what actually works. They walk through a real case: a mid-career marketing manager who increased her offer by $18,000 using a structured 'prepared-anchoring' technique from Carnegie Mellon professor Linda Babcock. Luna shares her own story of being told she was 'pushy' for negotiating, while Lucas...

In the debut episode of Women at Work with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a quietly pervasive barrier to women's career advancement: the hidden workload of office housework. They anchor the conversation in a 2024 study from the Harvard Business Review showing that women take on 45 percent more non-promotable tasks than men—tasks like taking meeting notes, planning office parties, or onboarding ne...