When the Pew Research Center recently asked registered voters what one word best described Hillary Clinton, two adjectives tied for seventh most frequently mentioned.

One was “knowledgeable.” The other, as Pew put it, “rhymes with rich.”

The 11 people who thus described the New York senator are hardly alone. Bloggers and radio babblers freely label her that way, as did a patrician-looking woman who famously stood up at a John McCain fund-raiser and asked with a smirk, “How do we beat the – ?” (McCain smiled and, after a moment, said it was an “excellent question.”)

Any woman running for so much as senior class president probably can expect to be hit by the b-dart once or twice, and such judgment isn’t reserved for politicians. Many women believe they’re still busted for their ambition and judged as witches for behavior that gets their male counterparts tagged “strong.”

The research seems to be with them. Experts say the rhymes-with-rich label sticks to and harms powerful women who speak brusquely or loudly, gesture assertively, disagree directly or take a purely autocratic approach to decision-making – though all those actions are commonly and even successfully used by male leaders.

“That certainly does happen, and research can produce that in an experiment, particularly if it’s a masculine context or a (woman in a) male-dominated role,” says Alice Eagly, chair of the psychology department at Northwestern University.

Eagly is co-author with a colleague of “Through the Labyrinth,” published last year. The book rethinks the glass-ceiling metaphor for an era when business and industry are more evolved yet more complex than ever.

“What particularly triggers people is if a woman has a kind of take-charge attitude,” Eagly says. “And it could be merely a display of extreme confidence. (But) if she’s competent in cooking or the feminine domain, it’s fine.”

If the problem is coming on too stereotypically “masculine,” a woman can wear a dress, deflect credit for her own good work and bring in cookies for the staff, right?

No, say those with experience. Leaders are expected to act like leaders and are quickly dismissed as weak if they don’t – especially if they’re women. That’s what some call the “double bind” of women’s leadership.

Barbara Danforth, executive director of the YWCA of Greater Cleveland, recalls taking a position years ago “where people thought I had gotten the job as an African-American woman. So I came out charging hard. And they called me – the whole time I had that job – they called me a bitch.”

Danforth says leadership style is an important issue because “we get labeled the b-word by the men, and the women don’t much like us either.

“As women, because we are still the minority in upper management, we need to have the finesse of being a velvet hammer,” Danforth says. “It is the ability to be powerful but to clothe it with great finesse.”

Karen Sandstrom is a feature writer for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.