He Posts. You Cringe. He Gets Promoted.
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Let’s be real for a minute: you’ve delivered groundbreaking research, you’ve moved papers one after the other through peer review. You’re probably doing the job of three people. And still… no spotlight. No celebration. No bump in title or recognition.
Meanwhile, your male colleague’s LinkedIn is a non-stop highlight reel of “I just published!” and “Look at me on BBC Radio!” alongside announcements of basic admin tasks as visionary work.
And you cringe. Not because you want to copy him, but because some part of you resents that they can do it without shame… and get rewarded for it. People start noticing and inviting him to more stuff. When you tell people at conferences where you’re based, they ask if you know him.
You sit there waiting for validation, like a newbie at her first faculty meeting, hands clasped, hoping someone notices you exist. Newsflash: nobody’s coming to hand you the mic. You have to pick it up yourself.
Here’s what’s actually going on:
You believe your work should speak for itself. You’ve internalised the myth that being visible makes you arrogant or unprofessional.
You see self-promotion as distasteful, especially now. In a climate of redundancies, budget cuts, and burned-out colleagues, it feels insensitive to be celebrating wins.
You’re subconsciously afraid of visibility. Historically, being visible has not been safe for women. Think about the pile-ons around Amy Cuddy or Alice Goffman (see also here). That fear of being dragged or discredited for stepping into the light is real. Both no longer have their tenure-track jobs.
You’re waiting to be chosen. Waiting to be nominated, mentioned, validated. But you can’t be celebrated if no one knows what you’re doing.
This isn’t about posting selfies with your latest article (unless you want to). It’s about learning how to be seen—without your nervous system going into meltdown.
Visibility has felt dangerous for women for centuries. But once you stop organising your career around the fear of being cancelled, misunderstood, or disliked—you become dangerous in the best way.
You stop making decisions from fear. You start moving from integrity. And everything changes.
This doesn’t have to mean becoming an academic influencer or cold-emailing journalists. It can look like whatever you want it to—but it does mean choosing visibility instead of waiting to be discovered.
So ask yourself:
If I wasn’t scared of—
• What my colleagues think
• Someone disagreeing with me online
• Getting something wrong in public
Getting cancelled
…what would I do?
Maybe you’d:
📢 Start posting about your work
📝 Launch a Substack or blog
🎙 Pitch yourself to a podcast
🗞 Contact the press office (they’re literally waiting for content)
🖋 Write an op-ed for The Guardian, The Conversation, or Times Higher
🎤 Apply to give a TEDx talk
📬 Or just start by adding something to the departmental newsletter
And if none of that feels like you? That’s fine. But maybe, just maybe, you do it for the people who’d benefit from hearing your ideas—people who want what you’re working on, if only they knew it existed.
Because here’s what visibility can get you:
🧠 You become a go-to thinker in your field
📧 Speaking invites and collaboration requests start appearing
🔥 You stop waiting for a pat on the head—you validate yourself
🏃♀️ Your career accelerates, because people reward what they can see
You don’t have to do any of this. But if you’re going to spend years producing excellent work, why not let it be seen? Once your nervous system is regulated, it’s more impact for less input, I can tell you that.
Why not make it easy for the right people to find you?
The cost of staying invisible is higher than you think.
