Impact of outdated career models on women in tech

Here’s what I learned from researching why there are so few senior women.. In the late 1990s, I undertook a major research project examining why a prominent tech organisation had minimal women in senior leadership. 💡 The conclusion challenged assumptions: the company wasn't discriminating. Instead, their entire operational culture - policies, promotion processes, unwritten norms - favoured a single archetype. The 'work hard, play hard' employee for whom work was life. This model suited some individuals. But it excluded many capable people and, critically, didn't optimise performance or business outcomes. And this is the case in countless organisations today. The recommendations then focused on structural interventions: flexible working arrangements, equitable parental leave, transparent promotion criteria. Various organisations implemented some of these changes. Twenty-five years later, the evidence suggests limited impact. Women CEOs declined from 28% to 19% between 2023 and 2024 (Grant Thornton International Business Report, 2024). Progress has reversed. Through three decades of resilience research, organisational consulting, and executive coaching, I've observed a consistent pattern: ❗Accomplished women leaders are declining senior positions. Not from inability or lack of ambition, but through informed choice about unsustainable cultural demands and behavioural norms. ❌ They're declining cultures that require suppressing their humanity, carrying disproportionate caring responsibilities, conforming to narrow leadership templates, prioritising short-term metrics over sustainable success, and excluding emotional intelligence from professional competence. The business case for change is robust. Research demonstrates that gender-diverse executive teams consistently outperform homogeneous ones across multiple performance indicators. But we can't achieve that diversity by simply setting targets while continuing to reward the same narrow set of behaviours. We must fundamentally alter what we recruit for and reward, and the psychological safety to be human. Hustle culture doesn't optimise performance - it degrades it. Exhausted brains make worse decisions. Burnout isn't a badge of honour; it's a design flaw. ✅ We need work cultures built for how humans actually thrive. Where empathy and emotional intelligence are assets, not liabilities. Where having a life outside work isn't seen as lack of commitment. Where multiple leadership styles are valued. This isn't gender opposition - it's about recognising that balanced leadership perspectives create healthier organisational ecosystems. For everyone. If we aspire to organisations that genuinely thrive and contribute positively to broader society, we need culture redesign based on human sustainability, not inherited industrial models. ⁉️ The question isn't why women decline these opportunities. It's why our leadership cultures make that the sensible response.

56% of women leave the tech industry 10-20 years into their careers - double the rate of men – just at the time when they should (in theory) be moving into leadership positions. We aren’t getting enough women into tech in the first place and we’re not keeping those we do have. Less senior women in tech means less female tech role models, which sends a message to more junior women that they’ll struggle to build a successful career in the industry. If we fail at retention, we’re much more likely to fail at recruitment too – neither are an option. The World Economic Forum predicts that 70% of the next decade's economic value will be driven by digitalisation, but we have a global tech talent shortage that threatens to seriously undermine that growth. An obvious solution would surely be to make the industry more appealing, welcoming, and supportive for the 50% of the population that feel disenfranchised by it. Instead, Miriam Partington reports for Sifted that “bro” culture continues to reign – one respondent from Sifted’s latest women in tech survey wrote “I see no future for myself at all in technology…I am repeatedly burnt out after years of this toxic masculine culture.” It’s a sentiment matched in a LinkedIn post I read earlier this week filled with comments from women in tech choosing, despite loving their work, to “bow out” of an industry they felt was stacked against them. It's 2024 and we are nowhere close to creating an industry where women feel safe, valued and appreciated. It's so frustrating and disappointing. Change must be intentional – it won’t just get better on its own. We have to be intentional about training, hiring, and promoting women in tech, which requires being intentional in creating cultures where women can achieve their full potential. I’d argue that it starts with gender pay equity, which is a priority for me at Kyriba right now. We have to signal support for women from the top – and compensation feels a pretty critical place to start. https://bit.ly/3WRXO1D

Having left big tech after 15+ years to lead a mission-driven startup, I've become an accidental career counselor. Almost every week, women open up and tell me: "I don't think I can work for a big company anymore" "I'm trying to figure out my next career" "I'm taking a few months to recalibrate" The pandemic left its mark on all of us, but women bore the brunt of it. We worked full days while managing children's remote learning. We persevered but paid by burning out. Then came the layoffs across tech, that were poorly planned and executed. After everything we’d given, this felt like a break in the psychological contract we had believed our employers honored. Here's the paradox: women have been getting promoted and doing better as leaders. We finally have the financial security our mothers dreamed of. But that security gave us freedom to ask: "Is this really what I want?" After decades of leaning in, many of us have discovered that the view from the top of the corporate ladder is not fulfilling, and the hunger for meaning has become ravenous. We're now asking deeper questions about what success means. This isn't just individual career changes. It's a shift in how women are approaching professional life. And in my opinion corporate America isn't ready. The companies that recognize this shift and adapt, will gain access to an extraordinary pool of talent. Those that don't? They will watch as their most valuable women walk away, taking their insight, experience, and leadership with them.

Playing it safe keeps you small. This is something I've been reflecting on today after a session with a client with an absolutely amazing career path in tech. Sometimes what feels like a safe move is actually fear showing up in disguise. That habit of staying in familiar roles might just be a way of avoiding bigger risks. There’s actually some really eye opening data around this. Studies show that playing it safe holds a lot of women back in tech. You probably already heard a million times that quote from research that found that women are far less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet 100% of the qualifications. Meanwhile, men tend to apply if they meet around 60%. Another statistic says 29% of women in tech said they’ve never applied for a job unless they met every single requirement. Never. This habit of waiting until 'fully prepared' stems from social conditioning, perfectionism and fear of failure (which I totally get by the way). The pressure to get everything right is real. But this cautious approach can also hold you back from visibility, leadership opportunities and long-term growth. A lot of women I’ve worked with say they’ve felt like they have to prove themselves more than their male peers just to be seen. In another survey, only 25% of women felt confident they could reach executive roles, compared to 54% of men. That’s a big gap. After doing over 1,000 coaching sessions each year, I realized that many women don’t leave tech because of family or work-life balance. They leave because they feel stuck. They’re not getting creative projects. They don’t feel supported or appreciated. And they’re tired of waiting to be 'ready.' If any of this sounds familiar, here’s something that might help. A simple mindset shift exercise I’ve shared with a lot of my clients: ⇢ Write down the list of all your fears ⇢ Rate how intense they feel on a scale from 0 to 10 ⇢ Then separately, rate the likelihood of their occurrence from 0 to 100% When I’ve done this exercise with my clients, the scariest things often turn out to be not that likely. The feelings are big, but the chances of those negative scenarios actually occurring in real life are often smaller. And that little shift can open the door to small, meaningful risks.. You don’t have to wait for perfect. You are enough.