Reports show that a staggering 500,000 women in the United States have left the workforce this year. Let that sink in. This number shows that this isn’t a trend; it’s a seismic shift, a silent strike, and the tremors will undoubtedly be felt here in Australia.
While our local statistics don’t yet mirror this exodus, the conditions are eerily familiar. The eye-watering cost of childcare, the push for a blanket return to the office and a growing backlash against DEI initiatives create a perfect storm. The American data feels less like a prediction and more like a preview of our potential future. It’s a warning of what happens when structural support for working women is dismantled.
For Australian businesses, this isn’t a ‘women’s issue,’ it’s a critical business risk. When women leave, they take with them talent, perspective, and a significant portion of consumer decision-making power. They leave behind less innovative, less resilient organisations. The cost isn’t just moral; it’s profoundly financial.
For decades, we’ve been sold the myth that women can “have it all.” But this was never about female capability; it was about a system designed for a different era. The digital revolution promised liberation through flexibility, but in practice, it often created a “third shift,” the work of integrating a career, caregiving, and the constant mental load into one seamless, exhausting performance.
The pandemic ripped away the facade, showing that when crisis hits, it is mothers who step back. Now, as we stand on the brink of an AI-driven reinvention of work, we face a choice: will we rebuild a system that finally works for women, or will we automate the old biases and call it progress?
The core failure is that we’ve prioritised optics over infrastructure. We host International Women’s Day events but balk at funding the flexible policies that are a prerequisite for female participation. This is not support. It’s a performance. And women are no longer willing to perform along with it.
We’ve mistaken flexibility for a perk, not a prerequisite
True flexibility isn’t just about working from home, it’s about being trusted to manage your own time and being judged on the quality of your output, not your physical presence. When this trust is absent, the message is clear: we value your seat more than your contribution.
We’ve outsourced the childcare crisis to individual families
We frame exorbitant childcare costs as a personal budgeting problem, rather than a catastrophic market failure. When a mother’s entire salary disappears into daycare fees, her departure is not a choice, it’s a financial calculation forced upon her by a system that refuses to see care work as essential economic infrastructure.
We are getting the ‘lonely only’ phenomenon disastrously wrong
Appointing one woman to a leadership team and calling the job ‘done’ is a recipe for failure. Research and experience show that you need a critical mass (at least two, and often more) to truly move the dial. We now know that when women lead, the effects are transformative for everyone.
Women demonstrate more transformational leadership styles, epitomising what’s good in an organisation and inspiring people to align with its mission. Teams with more women exhibit greater collective intelligence and collaboration, making better use of each member’s knowledge and skills.
According to the research, we know that the mere presence of a female leader leads people to anticipate fairer treatment. Appointing women to top tiers also mitigates deep rooted stereotypes, systematically changing insidious gender biases.
We must treat inclusion as a non-negotiable standard
This means conducting rigorous pay equity audits, creating clear, bias-free pathways for promotion, and fostering psychological safety so that women can challenge the status quo without being labelled ‘difficult’.
The ‘Great Exit’ is not inevitable for Australia, but averting it will require more than just talk. It demands a courageous commitment to building workplaces that don’t just hire women, but actively work to keep them.
The research is clear: when women thrive, businesses thrive. Our economic future depends on recognising this simple, powerful truth.