3 Traits That Help Women Thrive In Male-Dominated Careers

Every industry has unspoken cultural norms and stereotypes. When you don’t fit those norms, peers and mentors may create obstacles to your success or question why you are there. Even if they are not explicitly antagonistic, they may simply overlook you. I was curious to understand how people succeed in fields dominated by a group that they’re not a card carrying members of. To learn what it takes and get expert advice, I interviewed two trailblazing women who have created successful careers in male-dominated fields. 

Even though the two women I spoke to are from two completely different fields and started their careers in different decades, they have three striking traits in common. These three key traits have allowed them to thrive in their fields, even when other people questioned whether or not they had the right to be there at all.

Meet Our Experts: Holly Beck and Marcia Bjornerud, Trailblazing Women in Male-Dominated Careers

Raised in Southern California, Holly Beck asked her mom if she could go surfing. Her mom was firmly against it. “You’ll never get a boyfriend that way,” Beck recalled in an interview recently her mom telling her when she was a freshman in high school in the mid-1990s. “You need to be sitting on the beach looking cute in your bikini, not out competing with the boys.”

So Beck forged her mom’s signature, signed up for a surfing class, found a used surfboard and got her own ride to the beach. Once she hit the water, she caught the stoke and there was no turning back. Despite no mentors or coaches, no parental support and no good surf gear, Beck had a couple of advantages on her side. Naturally athletic, she picked up surfing independently. Secondly, she was the image of the classic beach babe: tall, beautiful and blonde. She landed sponsorships which helped to pay her way to surf competitively.

Decades later, female athletes still tend to need sponsorships to survive. According to a study by RBC Wealth Management, 82% of female athletes’ income comes from sponsorship compared to 37% of male athletes’. That’s because women athletes are paid less. On average, men earn 21x more playing salary than women athletes. To put that in perspective, in 2025, there were no women listed among the world’s 100 highest-paid athletes. Even tennis champion Coco Gauff, who signed a $31M deal, did not make the list.

Like most women entering college in the 1980s, Marcia Bjornerud wasn’t interested in science, but when she took an intro earth science to fulfill a general requirement, she fell in love with rocks — how they could tell you stories about the workings of the earth if you could learn to listen. Now decades later, she teaches students at Lawrence University in Geosciences and Environmental Studies. But the road from freshman student to geology professor wasn’t easy. She didn’t fit in with the macho, rugged, beer-drinking geologist stereotype. So she worked double hard to overcome her professors’ and colleagues’ expectations. She diligently researched, published, and wrote grants to fund her studies.

Though the fields of geology and earth sciences have changed to welcome more women since the 1980s, even today only 28% of all science professors are women.

So how did these trailblazing women do it? How did they learn to thrive in fields where they were not expected to be, let alone succeed?

What It Takes To Succeed In A Field Where You Don’t Fit

1. Don’t care what other people think of you. If someone says no, prove them wrong.

Both Beck and Bjornerud faced people who thought they weren’t cut out for their roles. But that didn’t stop them. Instead it fueled them. When Bjornerud was accepted into her PhD program straight out of undergrad, she did so based on her excellence as a student. But when she met the faculty who had awarded her a prestigious fellowship to pursue her PhD, their opinion of her changed: they decided she should go for her Master’s degree.

“I was pretty shocked. I had been admitted to this program. Nothing changed, except I walked into the room. They had seen my credentials, but I was a very small, young, slight person. I didn’t fit their idea of a PhD student.”

Bjornerud wasn’t put off by their dismissal of her. Instead, she dove into her research and earned her Master’s and then went on to earn her PhD. “There’s a cusséd part of me.” Bjornerud reflected on the experience.  “If somebody doubts me, then I’m going to show them that I’m up to the task.”

Holly Beck experienced even harsher friction as she started her surfing, from her mother and her peers. But that criticism taught her to follow her own instincts and not to trust other people’s opinions of her.

“I would have much preferred to have a mom that said, You can do anything you want, and I’m going to support you every step of the way,” Beck shared with me. “But since I didn’t have that, I can see that by her telling me no, it really fueled me to prove her wrong. It taught me not to care about norms and what people think. I love surfing so much. Even if my mom and all the boys in the water are telling me I shouldn’t be here, I’m gonna just disconnect from caring about what people think, and I’m just going to be me.”

2. Fall in love with your field.

Dave Evans, founder of the Design Your Life Labs at Stanford University, told me that in life you are either pushed by fear or pulled by love. It is clear that Beck and Bjornerud’s passion for surfing and earth science compelled them to build their careers around the things they loved. When I was interviewing Holly Beck she spoke about surfing in such a way that made me want to get back out to the ocean so I, too, could experience the thrill of the waves. When I was talking to Marcia Bjornerud her passion sparked in me a sudden desire to understand the earth sciences for the first time. What story is the earth trying to tell us earthlings?

Their passion for their field was so apparent, persuasive and contagious. Becoming a pro-surfer or tenured professor is challenging on its own; being a woman in these fields adds an additional layer of challenges. When you are in a field that may not be welcoming because of who you are, you need to have a source of intrinsic inspiration — love the subject —  to drive you forward and overcome these obstacles.

3. Define success for yourself.

The same year Beck graduated college, she won the amateur national title and officially turned pro. It was not common for surfers to earn their degrees while competing. Later, she went on to earn her MBA. While on tour, she earned her MBA through an online program. At the same time, she was becoming disenchanted with the pro-surfing lifestyle. She wanted to be her own boss, surf for fun, and stay in one place long enough to have a dog and plant a garden. In business school, she wrote a business plan for a surf school in Nicaragua, so when she stopped competing, she started to work toward making that goal a reality. Because she took the initiative to pursue higher education, she was able to define success beyond surf titles.

Surfing With Amigas (SWA) is now a dream realized. A surf school for women with high-quality, well-trained instructors, and multiple locations around the globe, including Nicaragua, Indonesia, Morocco and Spain. In the last year, they hosted 84 retreats. When she started the business in 2010, most of the women who came to the retreats were first-time surfers. Sixteen years later, most women who come to the retreats now are experienced surfers.

“Surfing has grown so much. And I feel like I had a part in it. Through all steps along the way, from being a pro and running the International Women’s Surfing organization. Then providing this place where women could come learn how to be confident in the water, in a surf shop, in the line up.”  Being a catalyst for more women finding a home in the male-dominated sport of surfing is how Beck defines success.

“In the beginning, I was arguing that women have a place in the water, women deserve to be in the ocean. Now we’re still arguing, but now the argument is women deserve to be at the peak, and women should have the opportunity to and are capable of riding a set [best] wave.”

Bjornerud also defined success for herself: In academia, securing tenure at R1 research university is often considered the pinnacle of success for an academic, because you can teach fewer classes and focus more on publishing and research. But for her own life circumstances with her family, she chose to move away from an R1 research institution to teach at a small liberal arts college. While she teaches more undergraduate classes, it has allowed her to pursue writing about geology for nonacademic audiences. In her memoir, Turning To Stone, she shares the stories of her research and her personal experiences doing the research. It opens the wonders of geology and earth science to a whole new audience.

“It’s grown out of increasing frustration with our inaction on environmental issues, especially climate change, which I think stems from a widespread illiteracy about geologic phenomena. I leveraged my feelings from when I was a student of being an outsider.” Bjornerud reflected when I asked her about her nonfiction books. “I remember that feeling that I can’t do science, or I’m not a scientist, and I am empathetic to people who may not think of themselves as science types. I can use that experience, which was negative, in a positive way in my writing, to welcome people in, to remember what seemed hard.”

She continued: “My teaching and my writing go very much hand in hand. If I weren’t teaching at a liberal arts college, if I were on the faculty at a R1 university with graduate students, I probably would not have found my way into popular science writing. But here my writing for normal people who don’t have rocks in their heads is valued as a kind of scholarship here at this university.”

Both Beck and Bjornerud defined success for themselves: They’ve placed emphasis on making their day-to-day life enjoyable and making their fields more welcoming. They are not just focused on winning the biggest prizes in their fields.

If you are building a career in a field that is not built for you, it’s important to set your eyes on the prize for what you really value. That means you must take the time to understand what’s important to you and not accept industry standards of what success looks like. Chances are, in an industry that doesn’t understand you, you may define success differently than the dominant culture.

Expert Advice On How to Succeed in a Field That Wasn’t Built for You

In talking to pro-surfer Holly Beck and geologist and author Marcia Bjornerud, I learned that to succeed in a field that wasn’t built for you, you need three major traits. You must:

1. Be stubborn. Don’t take no for an answer. It helps to be driven to prove people wrong. When you are told you can’t do something, are you the kind of person who feels motivated to show the naysayers that you actually can?
2. Be passionate. Whatever field you are in, there will be challenges on your way to success. If the field wasn’t built for you, you can expect to find even greater challenges. To overcome these challenges, you need to be compelled to move forward. Will your passion for your industry be enough to overcome these challenges?
3. Be your own picture of success. If you are not in the dominant group of your industry, you probably have a different understanding of what success looks like. Don’t be afraid to not chase after the same titles, career goals, and prizes as everyone else. Don’t let other people tell you what brings you fulfillment.

When you are a trailblazer, you can expect to meet additional challenges on your path to success. But with the expert advice from Holly Beck and Marcia Bjornerud, we can see that if you are stubborn, compelled by your passion, and define success for yourself, you can overcome the additional challenges.