I’ll admit I was furious when I read a headline yesterday claiming a new survey had found that most men believe women have themselves to blame for falling short of the C-suite. When you dig into the survey you soon realise that many women agree with them.
Positive Leaders surveyed 1000 men and women for the Australian Pulse of Women in Leadership study and found that most people of either gender believe the work/life juggle is the greatest contributor to the embarrassingly small percentages of women in leadership in most industries throughout the country. Almost one in five men and 13 percent of women claimed a lack of ambition was preventing women from reaching leadership roles.
Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick has been consistent in her belief that “it’s the model that needs to change — not the women”. So instead of blaming women for needing to juggle, we should point the finger at the most common organisational structure that favours employees who can prioritise their job without consideration for anything else, including family. It’s a system that has traditionally suited the majority of men and a minority of women.
It’s a system that I have worked within as a career-focused woman with two children for 20 years. And it’s been tough. On my way to the top I I found myself trapped in this unforgiving system. Early on, I tossed in my job because I wasn’t seeing enough of my young sons. I had reached the C-suite, reporting directly to the CEO and presenting to the board, in a public company and I was working long hours, five days a week plus all weekend from home. The pace was relentless, but it was exactly what I had set out to achieve as an ambitious young woman. I had been rewarded for a commitment to my career with minimum time to spend with my family. Far too many fathers experience exactly the same issue and there are an increasing number opting out too when they can afford to.
I soldiered on for two years like that because I feared that opting out would be career suicide. And then one day I had a complete meltdown. The trigger was my youngest son, whose major milestones I had missed for one work reason or another. I sat with him one evening after a long day in the office and realised I didn’t know him as well as I knew his older brother. I panicked and resigned the next day. It was a risky decision to walk away from my career in my mid-thirties, without a job to go to. But at that moment in my life I didn’t care what I was sacrificing. My focus was entirely on the children I was missing.
I look back at those days now with pride. It was definitely the right decision at the time, and would be again if faced with the same decision now. My children will always be my priority, unapologetically. My experience supports the survey results that it’s the work/life juggle that can keep women from the top jobs at certain points in their lives. But like Elizabeth Broderick I blame the lack of flexibility in most workplaces for this rather than the women who are trying to work with a system that punishes them in every way.
Do you agree that the reason more women aren’t in leadership roles is that the prioritisation of family is at odds with most management expectations? And if so, shouldn’t we be moving the discussion away from blaming women for our decisions and instead doing something to urgently change the system and enable more female leaders – especially given the survey’s finding that 62% of men claim they want to see more women in leadership positions.