"As if I'm in a fishbowl the entire time..." The Biological Reality of Women in Intelligence

In my research for a chapter in the forthcoming "Oxford Handbook of Women in Intelligence", I'm interviewing women from around the globe with operational experience in all sectors of the business of intelligence. These women have been trained to develop and live a cover that is close enough to their true selves, but far enough to remain objective and mission-focused. They identify potential targets for recruitment, make friends to elicit information, and try to survive office politics and organisational myopia. 

The interviews are frank and gut-wrenching... for many, this is the first time they can share their experiences, hurt, and frustrations. We laugh, cry, and try to make sense of the challenges and joys of working for something bigger than ourselves while staying sane... and celebrate being women in this exciting profession. This is the first in a series where I will share my insights into some aspects of the interviews that may not necessarily end up in the final book chapter. I use Lepisto et al. 's (2015) Integrated Model of Professional Identity Work in analysing the data.

A Hyper-Masculine Fishbowl

We often assume women in high-stakes professions struggle because of the workload or the "glass ceiling." But my research into women in operational intelligence suggests a different, more visceral shared context. They knew the job was dangerous. They knew the hours were brutal. They expected the "Greedy Institution." (More about this in another article). What defined their professional reality was something else entirely: Hyper-Masculine Surveillance, or to be more precise, a Hyper-Masculine Fishbowl. 

The workplace wasn't just male-dominated in numbers; it was coded male in every sensory detail. The Fishbowl metaphor focuses on the hyper-visibility and isolation that the women felt. The metaphor implies you are watched by everyone because you are an anomaly. You are separated from the group by a transparent barrier; you can see in, but you aren't really "in".

In this environment, women are not just outnumbered; they are biological anomalies in a closed ecosystem, constantly observed, scented, and assessed by the "Brotherhood." To survive the fishbowl, they must engage in exhausting "identity work," frantically toggling between erasing their gender and weaponising it.

The Nature of the Fishbowl

A fishbowl offers no privacy. Everything you do is magnified. For the women I interviewed, this visibility was often hostile.

V described the experience of sitting in a command room with 35 to 40 men as the only female. She felt that speaking up and differing from the general consensus meant drawing the "Eye of Sauron" upon herself. an intense, terrifying focus that made her want to slide under the radar rather than stand out. For her, this represents the absolute, unwavering, and destructive focus of the men in the room, constantly searching for the weakness of women. Even when they weren't in the room, they were being watched. 

AI Generated

This surveillance extends beyond professional scrutiny into sexualized observation. M described being on a surveillance operation, all dressed up for the job. Instead of professional comms, she heard her male colleagues commenting over the radio about how "hot" and "sexy" she looked. She wasn’t an officer to them; she was an object in the bowl, being watched through the glass. 

The fishbowl isn’t just about vision; it is about the environment itself. The "water" these women swim in is chemically and culturally male. D, who served multiple tours in the armed forces, described austere environments saturated with "male pheromones" where men in isolation could literally "smell female". Her presence wasn't just a professional disruption; it was a biological one. Because the environment is so "male," normal human behaviours are misinterpreted through a sexual lens. K was explicitly told by her female boss that she was being "pimped out" to IC partners, a stark reminder that in this fishbowl, female identity is often reduced to a transactional commodity, even by fellow women.

Survival Strategy 1: Sterilising the Scales

How do you survive when your very biology makes you a target? You try to become invisible. Before these women could engage in tradecraft, they had to engage in Somatic Identity Work: lowering their voices, suppressing smiles, and armouring their bodies to stop being viewed as "distractions" or "sex kittens" and start being viewed as operators.

To neutralise the sexualised atmosphere, many women engaged in Identity Subtraction. They scrubbed away their femininity to stop being seen as "distractions." D did not want to be associated with the other women on the base who had sexual relations with the men. She wanted to be treated as a competent professional who is focused on achieving the mission. This forced her to "sterilise" herself. "Just baggy clothes, no red bras, no perfume or make-up, hair in a tight bun..." all to neutralise the biological threat she posed to the team's cohesion (her commander's words). She explicitly noted, "I could never smile," because friendliness was interpreted by her male peers as a sexual invitation. K adopted a "uniform" of a kick-ass leather jacket and cool sneakers. She viewed this not as fashion, but as "armour" against the male culture of her agency. M only wore black or dark blue loose-fitting clothes, not only to blend into the background during operations, but also because she thought she looked less attractive to her male colleagues.

Survival Strategy 2: The Camouflage of Competence

Conversely, some women used the fishbowl's distorted glass to their advantage. They realised that because the men outside the glass underestimated them, they could move undetected. H, who works in corporate intelligence, leveraged the "dumb blonde" stereotype. She realised that by carrying a Chanel bag and appearing non-threatening, she could easily coax men into revealing secrets they would never tell a male peer. B, a CIA veteran, noted that being female was her "greatest asset" in the field because she was effectively invisible. She could stand on the "pointy end" of operations and be mistaken for a lost tourist in need of directions.

The Cost of the Bowl: The Stuck Switch

The tragedy of the Hyper-Masculine Fishbowl is that you cannot swim in it forever without it changing you. The constant pressure to modify one's identity leads to what I call the "Stuck Switch." 

After years of "becoming a guy" to survive her time serving in the military, D realised she couldn't switch back. She "forgot how to smile" and struggled to maintain romantic relationships because she couldn't turn off the alpha-male persona she had constructed for survival. M, after years of isolation to protect her cover, felt she "wasn't a woman anymore" and lost the ability to socialise or dress for herself. S still struggles with emotional and physical issues.

The research is clear: success in operational intelligence often requires women to fracture their identities. They must be "one of the boys" to be trusted by their peers, but "invisible women" to succeed in the mission. If the cost of entering the fishbowl is the loss of the self, is the price of admission too high? Is there sufficient mental health opportunities to assist women (and men) to get "unstuck"?