Somewhere around age 24, someone gave you career advice.

Maybe a parent. A manager. A paperback with a blazer on the cover.

Keep your head down. Work hard and it’ll be noticed. Be loyal. Never talk about money. Find a mentor. Have it figured out by 40.

Some of it was useful. Some of it was always a bit suspect. And some of it was built for a workplace, an economy and a version of you that no longer exist.

Here’s what’s worth unlearning, and what to do instead.

First, the stakes. In the U.S., women working full-time earned 82.7% of what men earned in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the gap isn’t flat across a career. Women aged 25 to 34 earned 88.3% of men’s earnings. At 45 to 54, it was 79.5%. At 55 to 64, 76.6%. In Canada, women earned 88 cents for every dollar men earned in average hourly wages in 2025, per Statistics Canada.

Those numbers have many causes, and advice alone didn’t create them. But they’re a good reason to check whether the rules you’ve been following are still serving you.

Old rule #1: “Keep your head down. Your work will speak for itself.”

Your work does not speak. It sits quietly in a shared drive while someone else presents it.

Good work is the price of admission. It isn’t, on its own, the thing that gets you promoted. Visibility matters: people with influence need to know what you did, what you’re capable of, and what you want next.

What to do instead: Keep a running record of results, with numbers where you can. Share wins in a factual, unfussy way (a short monthly note to your manager counts). And say out loud what you want next. People can’t advocate for a goal they don’t know you have.

Old rule #2: “Find a mentor.”

Mentors are great. Mentors give advice.

Sponsors spend their own capital on you: they put your name forward, vouch for you in rooms you’re not in and push for the stretch assignment.

That distinction shows up in the data. McKinsey and LeanIn.Org’s Women in the Workplace 2025 study, which draws on 124 organizations and a survey of roughly 10,000 employees, found that employees with sponsors were promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without over the past two years. And women were less likely than men to have a sponsor at every level reported, with the widest gap at entry level (31% vs. 45%) and a smaller one at VP and above (66% vs. 72%).

(That study describes itself as a study of women in corporate America and draws on large employers, so it won’t map perfectly onto a 12-person firm in Kelowna or a hospital in Ohio. The principle travels anyway.)

What to do instead: Keep your mentors. Then ask yourself: who, specifically, would say my name in a promotion meeting? If the answer is “no one” or “I’m not sure,” that’s the gap to work on. Sponsorship usually grows out of delivering visible results for someone senior who has influence.

Old rule #3: “Loyalty gets rewarded.”

Sometimes it does. Often, it gets rewarded with a standard raise.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta tracks U.S. wage growth for people who change jobs versus people who stay. In its September 2026 data, median wage growth for job switchers was 4.7%, compared with 3.4% for job stayers. That gap shrinks and grows with the economy, and switching jobs comes with real costs and risks. But it’s a reminder that “staying put” and “getting paid what you’re worth” aren’t automatically the same thing.

Meanwhile, Canada’s employers were projecting average 2026 raises of roughly 2.7% to 3.1%, depending on the survey. Inflation was running at 3.0% in August 2026.

What to do instead: You don’t have to leave to benefit. But you do need to know your market rate, and you need to treat your current employer as one option, not the only one. Quiet loyalty with no outside reference point is how people end up underpaid for a decade.

And for some women, the other option is working for themselves. If you’ve been thinking about going out on your own, Moda Academy’s Launch Your Online Business course, offered in partnership with Muddy Stilettos, walks through the basics, from choosing a business idea and planning to marketing your business online. Moda Academy is a sister company of Muddy Stilettos.

Old rule #4: “Never talk about money.”

This rule mostly protected the people setting salaries.

And the law is moving. In British Columbia, the Pay Transparency Act requires public job postings to include the expected pay or a pay range, bars employers from asking applicants what they were paid elsewhere, and protects employees from reprisal for asking about or sharing their pay. In Ontario, as of January 1, 2026, employers with 25 or more employees must include pay information in publicly advertised job postings (for roles paying $200,000 or less, with ranges no wider than $50,000). In the U.S., the National Labor Relations Board states that employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act have the right to talk with co-workers about their wages.

Rules vary a lot by province and state, and not every worker is covered by every law. But “we don’t discuss pay here” carries less weight than it used to.

What to do instead: Read posted ranges for roles like yours. Compare notes with trusted peers. Use public wage data. Then use it, which is exactly what we walk through in How to Ask for a Raise When You’ve Been “Grateful to Have a Job” for Too Long.

Old rule #5: “Just ask. Be more confident.”

This one’s half right, and the wrong half matters.

The popular idea is that women don’t negotiate. But a study by Benjamin Artz, Amanda Goodall and Andrew Oswald, using data on about 4,600 Australian workers, found women asked for raises about as often as men. When they asked, men succeeded 20% of the time and women 16% of the time.

One study, one country. Still, it complicates the comfortable story that the problem is women’s confidence.

What to do instead: Ask, absolutely. But don’t treat a “no” as proof you asked wrong. Build your case on evidence, get it in writing, ask what would need to be true for a yes, and set a date to revisit.

Old rule #6: “Leave your personal life at the door.”

Nobody actually leaves their body at the door. Especially not at 47.

A 2023 report from the Menopause Foundation of Canada, based on a survey of Canadian women aged 40 to 60, found that 32% of working women said menopause symptoms had negatively affected their performance at work, 24% said they had hidden their symptoms, and 67% said they wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to their supervisor about them. An economic analysis in the same report, prepared with help from Deloitte Canada, estimated unmanaged symptoms cost the Canadian economy $3.5 billion a year, most of it in lost income to women through reduced hours, reduced pay or leaving work.

Caregiving, kids, a parent’s diagnosis: same story. Life doesn’t pause for performance reviews.

What to do instead: You don’t owe anyone your medical history. But you can ask for practical adjustments (flexibility, a cooler workspace, a changed meeting schedule) without over-explaining, and you can check what your benefits plan and HR policies already offer. Silence often costs more than a short, professional conversation.

Old rule #7: “You should have it figured out by 40.”

Says who?

Working lives are longer than they used to be. Among Canadian women aged 55 to 64, labour force participation rose from about 41% in 2000 to about 62% in 2025, according to OECD data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. If you’re 45, you may have 20 working years ahead of you. That’s an entire career.

Ageism is real, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. In AARP research published in 2024, about six in 10 U.S. workers aged 50 and older said they had seen or experienced subtle forms of age discrimination at work. That’s a reason to be strategic, not a reason to stop.

What to do instead: Treat skills as renewable. Learning something new at this stage is harder in some ways and better in others, which is the subject of Learning Something New After 40 Is Harder. It’s Also Worth It. Keep your network warm before you need it. And stay current with the tools your field is adopting. The same Women in the Workplace 2025 report found only 21% of entry-level women said managers encouraged them to use AI tools, versus 33% of entry-level men. Nobody’s handing out the invitation evenly, so you may need to send your own.

What still holds up

Not everything from your 20s was wrong.

• Be reliable. Still matters. It’s just not enough on its own.
• Build relationships. Still true. The difference now is being deliberate about which ones can open doors.
• Keep learning. More true than ever.
• Save early. Still annoyingly correct.

The difference at 40-plus is that you have something you didn’t have at 25: evidence. A track record. Pattern recognition. Some idea of what you’re good at and what you never want to do again. That’s leverage. Use it.

For more on work, pay and ambition, visit the Money & Career desk.

The Ambitious One’s take

A lot of the advice women got in their 20s was about being agreeable enough to be kept.

Keep your head down. Don’t make it weird. Be grateful.

That advice was built for proving you belonged in the room.

You’re in the room. You’ve been in the room for 20 years. Some days you’re running the room and nobody updated your title.

The next stage of a career isn’t about being kept. It’s about being chosen: for the bigger job, the better pay, the project you actually want. That takes visibility, sponsors, market data and the occasional uncomfortable conversation.

Unlearn the parts that kept you small.

Keep the parts that made you good.

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ABOUT THE MUDDY MONEY & CAREER DESK

The Muddy Money & Career Desk covers work, money and ambition for women who are tired of jargon and judgment, from paycheques and raises to budgets, careers and the decisions in between.

Featuring The Ambitious One: work, money and ambition without the BS. The smart friend who brought the spreadsheet.

Muddy Money & Career content is educational and informational only and is not individualized career, financial or legal advice. Employment laws vary by province, state and employer; check the rules that apply to you or consult a professional.

Sources

• Highlights of women's earnings in 2024 — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Report 1117 (Jan. 2026)
• The gender wage gap persists — Statistics Canada, StatsCAN Plus (Mar. 5, 2026)
• Women in the Workplace 2025 — McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org
• Wage Growth Tracker — Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (update Oct. 8, 2026)
• Two new surveys predict salary growth of 2.7% to 3.11% for 2026 in Canada — Canadian HR Reporter (Sept. 19, 2025)
• Consumer Price Index, August 2026 — Statistics Canada, The Daily
• Pay transparency in B.C. — Government of British Columbia
• O. Reg. 476/24: Rules and Exemptions re Job Postings (under the Employment Standards Act, 2000) — Government of Ontario, e-Laws
• Employee rights — National Labor Relations Board
• Do Women Ask? — Benjamin Artz, Amanda Goodall & Andrew J. Oswald, Industrial Relations 57(4), 2018, pp. 611–636
• Menopause and Work in Canada — Menopause Foundation of Canada (2023, sponsored by Sun Life; Deloitte economic analysis)
• Labor Force Participation Rate: Female, 55 to 64, for Canada (LRAC55FECAA156N) — OECD Infra-Annual Labor Statistics via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• Workplace age discrimination still pervasive — AARP (Oct. 9, 2024)