Threatened by Her: Authentic Women, Power, and Backlash AT WORK

Becoming more authentic is widely celebrated as a marker of psychological health, yet for many women at work it increases rather than reduces their social risk. As women disentangle from people‑pleasing, reclaim their own values, and shift from external approval to internal anchoring, they often become less compliant, less available for emotional labour, and less willing to collude in everyday distortions. These shifts, while clinically healthy, can be experienced as threatening by colleagues and leaders whose power relies on role conformity, silence, and impression management. Drawing on research in authenticity, workplace bullying, dark‑trait personalities, and gendered backlash, as well as qualitative data from my dissertation on covert aggression by women in U.S. workplaces, this article examines why “becoming more yourself” can trigger narcissistic injury, gendered jealousy, and systemic retaliation—and how to understand these dynamics as structural clashes rather than personal failures.