The enormous gap between women’s and men’s career achievements is primarily due to serious workplace discrimination against women seeking to move up to increasingly important leadership positions. That discrimination, in turn, is due to stereotype-driven gender bias. Our book, Breaking Through Bias, the blog posts we write, and the speeches and workshops we give are all focused on this workplace bias and how women can avoid or overcome it. But women face gender bias in situations that have nothing to do with career advancement. For example, girls and women are generally prevented from participating in contact sports; female Marine recruits are intentionally given less rigorous training than men; women are explicitly prohibited from joining many country clubs; and women are often relegated to “women’s boards” at major cultural institutions.

There are also situations in which a woman and a man can engage in precisely the same conduct but the woman ends up being branded with a very hurtful social stigma while the man emerges with his reputation intact. A particularly poignant example of this phenomenon is the public exposure of a high profile extramarital relationship. The relationship of Paula Broadwell and David Petraeus provides a good window through which to view the aftermath of such an affair gone awry.

While Petraeus was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he and Broadwell were both married but engaged in a long-running sexual relationship. When their affair was exposed, Petraeus resigned from the CIA, apologized to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor (for giving Broadwell classified documents for use in the biography she was writing of him). Although Broadwell was never criminally charged, she lost her security clearance; the Army withdrew her proposed elevation to lieutenant colonel; and she lost her affiliations with Harvard’s Center for Policy Leadership and Tuft’s Fletcher School Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution.

Initially, therefore, both Petraeus and Broadwell paid a heavy price for their affair. Four years later, however, it is now a very different story.

Petraeus is a partner in a New York private equity firm; he advises the White House on the war against the Islamic State; he is affiliated with three universities, including Harvard; he is sought after as a speaker; he publishes op-ed pieces in prestigious newspapers, including The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal; and he has been prominently mentioned as one of five former military leaders who might be drafted for President by the Republican Party.

By contrast, Broadwell — despite her two masters’ degrees and extensive public policy experience — has been unable to find a job. She has been told on several occasions that hiring her would be a public relations nightmare. Broadwell has not heard from her best friend since the affair was revealed. Another friend whom she asked to speak up on her behalf said “It [is] too controversial to touch.” And a former West Point classmate said, “This happened and just nobody helped her up.” Most painful of all, Broadwell continues to be portrayed as a “homewrecker,” “stalker,” “temptress,” and “the mistress.” (Petraeus, on the other hand, is described as “the consummate gentleman and family man,” who simply “let his guard down.”)

Broadwell is now working on a number of not-for-profit projects, including combatting gender bias in the media. She has asked many journalists to stop using the word “mistress” – a term that has no male equivalent. The AP has agreed, The New York Times’ public editor has advised the paper to drop the word, and The Charlotte Observer, her hometown newspaper, is working to retire it.

The term “mistress,” however, continues in common use and serves as a reminder of our society’s asymmetric views of women and men’s culpability for extramarital sexual activity. As President Obama stated at the recent White House conference on the United State of Women, “We need to change the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality but gives men a pat on the back for theirs.”

But as Broadwell’s case makes clear, a woman’s ability to reclaim her good name and place in society after the exposure of such an affair is severely limited. Little by little, however, through hard work, persistence, and the passage of time, most of the world will forget, and a woman stigmatized in this way will eventually be able to reclaim her former life.