Work organisations have become a major site of gender politics for professional women and men over the last twenty years. There are more senior women today, but increased opportunities have not been gained without psychological consequences. Rather than catalogue the barriers to women’s success, Paula Nicholson examines the problems they can face as a result. She re-examines the ways that patriarchal structures resist women’s progress, and how male success has psychological implications for women’s sense of subjectivity, self-esteem and gener identity, and how achieving against such odds has an impact on women’s everyday lives.