Female workers struggling with the idea that women should be かわいい/Kawaii

When women are evaluated or described, being かわいい/kawaii（cute, pretty, adorable and so on) both in appearance and in characters is highly valued in Japanese society. I would say that being かわいい/kawaii is an important element for women to attract men. Despite that, the concept of かわいい/kawaii is so ambiguous that I can't clearly define it. However, I can say that men still tend to view immature or less intelligent women to be かわいい/kawaii, although more and more young men don't do that. 

I started working at male-dominated positions with career paths immediately after graduation (It was many years ago). At the time, assistant positions without career paths were still common for women, even female university graduates, I would often be forced to struggle with the idea that women should be かわいい. The fact that some women were working on the same level as men was annoying for conservative men, although they understood that the times required it. Companies expected these women to perform better than the men. This was because companies need to convince their conservative male workers that they had made the right decision to employ these women since their conservative male workers were against hiring these women. However, the better these women performed, the more negative attention they attracted. Both male and female co-workers gossiped about them, saying that 女のくせに. I don't know how I translate the typical phrase into English, but the translation might be that you shouldn't do it because you are a woman or it's unbelievable that women do it. The phrase is used when women exhibited behaviors go against the stereotype.

Women working on the same level as men sometimes suffered from the feeling that the more highly they were appreciated at work, the less value they had as women. In fact, it was not easy for these women to find a boyfriend who appreciated and supported their careers. 

Today, more and more people, regardless of gender, keep an open mind. However, I sometime find that some men still stick with the idea that women should be かわいい/kawaii. As a matter of fact, some men don't want to work under female managers. Some male managers don't want to hire capable women because these women seem to be smarter or older than they are. I think that these attitudes are based on this idea. However, as far as I know, men who can manage capable women well and take advantage of their abilities tend to succeed.