Companies are panicking—women in executive positions are leaving in droves. According to a new report, published by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.org, "for every woman at the director level who gets promoted, two female directors are choosing to leave their company." This is based on data from nearly 13 million employees at over 330 companies in America and Canada, no small sample.
"We really think this could spell disaster for companies," LeanIn CEO Rachel Thomas said of the findings.
Could it? Do companies—or for that matter, women—need to panic?
Not in the slightest. A closer look at the reasons why women are leaving, and at the broader cultural implications, shows why no one needs to brace for disaster. In fact, companies should use this information to their advantage to eschew traditional feminist mantras, understand and embrace the differences between men and women, and create a workplace women love.
In addition to the raw numbers about the fact that women in leadership positions are essentially taking one step forward, two steps back, the report offers a few observations as to why that might be. COVID-19 exacerbated the difficulties faced by women in the workplace as affordable child care became harder to find, available jobs diminished, and gender pay gaps stalled. Working women got hit hard during the pandemic.
Some women interviewed for the report made it sound like executive leadership positions at a specific company, or in general, just didn't work for them. They realized, for a number of reasons, this wasn't what they wanted. Maybe they wanted to work fewer hours or see their children more. Women demanding what they want, or deserve, should be a boon. We want daughters who speak up, not tolerate situations that don't work for them. This is what drives positive change.
Remote work was another issue that came up. Only one in 10 female employers said they want to work from the office the majority of the time. The pandemic revealed many women can do their job—and everything else they have on their plate—from home, and they want that to continue. "Women are not breaking up with work, they are breaking up with companies who are not delivering the work culture and the opportunity and the flexibility that's so critically important to them," Thomas said.
It's important to understand just how women got here and how this could actually be a watershed moment for the workplace and women.
The modern-day feminist movement went about advertising women and work poorly, both to corporations and society. They lacked nuance and intuition. It isn't enough to tout equality in the workplace for its own sake. For a long time, that was the goal: simply to have as many women in leadership or executive positions as a company has long had men. But this is silly.
Women aren't robots and they aren't men. They have different wants and needs; they aspire to different roles. They have ambition but also desires. They have career goals but also relationship goals. While it's true many women might wish their male counterparts "did more" so they could do less, statistics still show many women value work and motherhood, or other important things, equally. All this comes into play when women evaluate whether a position at a company works for them.
This might seem like it spells temporary disaster for companies—or the modern feminist movement—just trying to reach equality at work. But really it should be wonderfully enlightening. It should shine a spotlight on how women are wired differently from men. Rather than scold or excoriate women for their different wants and needs, companies must reevaluate what they can offer female employees. Rather than forcing all women to change, why shouldn't companies change for them? They should, because otherwise, these talented women are quitting.
For example, perhaps a competitive package for a woman in an executive position looks different than it would for a man in the same position. Perhaps a woman would stay at a position where she was offered more remote opportunities, a flexible schedule, and negotiable, but competitive, pay.
Rather than despair, women and their workplaces should look at this as a turning point to finally figure out that age-old question: what do women want? Women should be grateful they are in this position, to even ignite such a debate, and contribute to its powerful answer. Numerical equality in the workplace was never a great goal for women because the only way it would succeed would be to treat women as if they were their male counterparts. They're not. A woman's wants and needs are different. The workplace has now seen this effort at equality play out. This is the time corporations should embrace this information and make changes that show they see women as unique cohorts, they value them too, and they can change accordingly.
Nicole Russell is a mother of four who has worked in Republican politics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and the Washington Examiner. She is an opinion columnist at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
