There’s a career tax on being smart at work—but only if you’re a woman

Sara Winslow had been working in sales for almost 20 years when things started to get uncomfortable. It was 2020. She was in her early forties, and by any conventional measure, she was thriving. She had just won an internal company award for bringing in the biggest sales account the previous year. But not everyone was celebrating her success. In meetings, she says, some of her male colleagues would challenge and undermine her. Tensions came to a head in July 2020, when, after a particularl...