Happy Tuesday, founders,

Have you ever been afraid of being perceived as too masculine? Or too feminine?

When we talk about masculinity and femininity, we are not talking about gender — being male or female. These two words are Latin for "man-like" or "woman-like." They are emotional attributes of who we are — energies, states, and beliefs that coexist within us.

I remember once at a female founder roundtable, a female founder said she once found herself trying to write emails like a man — short, concise, no emojis. (And of course, there’s that famous case of Elizabeth Holmes faking a male voice throughout her entire career before her prison sentence.) It’s not uncommon to find a male entrepreneur who has lost touch with his partner, his children, and his own feelings.

In both cases, the tension isn’t about gender. It’s about how we are managing masculine and feminine energies inside us, and most of us are managing them unconsciously.

I certainly wasn’t someone who was aware of the importance of embracing both dynamics in a healthy way. In the early years of my journey, it was only after a few comments about how I could be perceived as intimidating, too headstrong, straightforward, dominant, and a list of other negative connotations that I, too, unconsciously began to slowly, but surely ‘suffocated’ my masculinity.

It is such a common dilemma female founders face, although on the other hand, I cannot say I fully agree with many voices online that claim this is solely a societal problem, when a strong woman is labelled as "too dominant," or "too harsh". These same criticisms can equally apply to men who embody only the negative masculine traits without balance.

It is about how the woman carries herself - whether she is comfortably and confidently integrated with both dynamics, or simply mimicking masculine behaviours that are not fully realised within her. “It is the worst kind of masculinity - when a woman is trying to be a man. She’s in her ‘fake’ masculine energy,” as my mentor once put it.

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Anima & Animus

Carl Jung wrote about this through anima and animus - the feminine and masculine aspects within each psyche (Jung, 1959).

Both are essential for a whole self.

In the daily demands of running a business, we can easily be overly-identified with one, and exile the other.

• Masculine-dominant founders often prize logic, drive, structure - but risk losing access to intuition, emotional nuance, and relational depth.

• Feminine-dominant founders often prize empathy, creativity, receptivity - but may struggle to hold boundaries, face direct conflict and in rejection of her own masculinity.

🔍 How it shows up in founders

This plays out in subtle - and not so subtle - ways in our daily leadership:

⊙ Writing “masculine” emails to avoid seeming soft or indecisive

⊙ Masking vulnerability in front of investors or the team

⊙ Over-controlling when stressed (masculine excess)

⊙ Over-caretaking or pleasing when seeking harmony (feminine excess)

⊙ Feeling guilty for success (too much drive) or for resting (too much receptivity)

In the rush to “balance” masculine and feminine, we often reinforce the very binary we are trying to escape. We start labelling behaviours: decisiveness is masculine, empathy is feminine; drive is masculine, creativity is feminine. But as Taoist philosophy reminds us through yin and yang, these energies are not opposites to be balanced, but forces that continuously transform into and contain one another (Kohn, 2009). The moment we fix an identity or behaviour as strictly masculine or feminine, we lose the fluidity that makes us whole.

In the West, we are conditioned to think in binaries: work/life, logic/emotion, masculine/feminine. But the human psyche doesn’t work this way. The goal of inner development and leadership is not to perfectly balance a masculine list and a feminine list, but to become more fully human. To reclaim the full range of being: to be decisive and receptive, ambitious and nurturing, strong and tender. Many of us were trained to inhabit only parts of this range. The real integration is in unlearning those constraints and embodying a richer, more authentic version of ourselves.

🪞 The Role of Transference

Here’s where psychology gets very practical.

Transference - originally defined by Freud, and later developed by Klein and others - is when we transfer emotional templates from past relationships onto present ones.

In this context, we often borrow postures from admired or feared figures:

• Writing like a former boss

• Leading like an admired founder

• Suppressing softness because an early experience taught us it’s unsafe

As Petriglieri (2020) notes, leaders often unconsciously "borrow" identities during periods of self-expansion, but without awareness, this borrowing can turn into fusion or self-abandonment. Read more about it from my last week’s writing here.

👀 Reclaiming wholeness: how to integrate, not balance

For founders, this integration is more than our personal or spiritual growth, as it ties directly to how we show up in leadership.

Here are a few ways to start this unlearning and reclaiming process:

1. Reflect on inherited narratives. 

   Notice where your discomfort arises. Does showing vulnerability feel unsafe? Does resting trigger guilt? Does assertiveness make you uneasy? Often, these signals reveal old narratives about what is “acceptable” or “desirable” to express.

2. Study yourself in action.

   Pay attention to moments when you swing too far toward force or passivity. In meetings, in conflict, in collaboration. Ask: Am I responding from an old role, or from who I truly am now?

3. Practice embodiment, not intellectualisation. 

   Integration happens through action. If softness feels foreign, practice it consciously. If directness feels unnatural, lean into it. Somatic practices — breathwork, dance, martial arts — are powerful here, as they let us experience these states physically, not just conceptually.

4. Remember: the goal is wholeness. 

   As Petriglieri (2020) reminds us, identity is not a fixed box to optimise, it is an ongoing act of becoming. When we reclaim all parts of ourselves without apology or over-correction, we show up as more complete leaders, partners, and creators.Cute Quote here

💡 Bonus watch

Watch this fasinating video of social psychologist Gerard Hendrik Hofstede explain femininity and masculinity in a society, as part of his 6 cultural dimension theory.

Masculine society:

• Girls shall cry, boys shall fight

• Men should focus on material gains, while women should focus on the quality of life

Feminine society:

• Girls and boys shall cry, but neither shall fight

• Men are modest and can be tender, and should also focus on the quality of life

His study shows that the most masculine countries are Japan, Italy, Mexico, China, Britain, Germany and the USA. The most feminine countries are the UAE, France, Russia, Thailand, Costa Rica, Denmark and the Netherlands.

• More functional illiteracy in masculine societies than in feminine societies

• More people are living below the poverty level in masculine societies.

• Feminine society tends to have longer vacations.

• Feminine society uses social media for rapport building, while masculine society uses social media for fact building.

As always, hit reply if something in here hits home, or if you want to share the game you caught yourself playing.

Yours in conscious leadership,
Lavena

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