Forbes: Why Women Leaders Are Leaving Their Jobs At Record Rates

One New Year’s resolution (for me) was to try and blog more as I am conscious I am being less reflective on things I read, webinars I attend, podcasts I listen to, etc. We will see over the coming months if I manage to keep the blogging up or not!

With International Women’s Day not far away, it was interesting to see this article from Forbes.

Obviously, I am at risk of being shouted down here but, in my opinion, there are a few things in this article I thought I would reflect on:

• “leave their jobs to get their needs met” and an increasing gap between men and women – are differences between men and women’s needs still so pronounced?
• “the economic and personal pressure is higher on women than ever before” – this sounds like a big claim but it may be the case – see my thoughts in the paragraph below*
• “burnout as the main reason” – again, is this not a universal issue? What is happening in corporate America!?
• “harassment and microaggressions” perhaps answers the question in the last bullet along with “lack of flexibility” and “limited advancement opportunities”. All of these reasons can, of course, be issues for groups beyond women and the suggestions listed – such as “flexible hours” and hybrid work really should be the minimal for most leadership roles in a modern environment.

*Ultimately the issue for all households (whatever the gender) is that we have gone from a situation where many households could get by on one salary (my mum, for example, missed several years of work including a spell of around only 0.2FTE and later my dad was made redundant and had years of part-time work before retirement) to most families needing two FTE salaries to get by. This leads to political issues – for example, whilst President Biden might expect a good run into the election based on a (relative to other countries) strong economic position we are instead in the situation where memes like the below are rife.

The reality, of course, was very different for many people. However, the point about purchasing power of the masses versus the “1%” is clearly a major issue in many countries. Where women are being expected to fulfil traditional roles alone plus economic pressure then clearly there will be severe “economic and personal” pressure (as mentioned in the article – see bullets above).

The conclusion of the Forbes article includes “if companies want to retain valuable talent, they need to create an equitable workplace where women can thrive”. I think it is fair to say we can simply rewrite that as “if companies want to retain valuable talent, they need to create an equitable workplace where everyone can thrive”.