Women won’t bounce back forever
Opinion
Breaking the toxic cycle of corporate cultures where women feel they must constantly prove themselves starts with honesty.
If you told the truth about yourself, who would you be? It’s a question I think about often as the gap between rhetoric and reality continues to shred women’s careers.
Leaders receive inclusion awards, as women pick up the pieces of their lives after facing the unrelenting pressure of toxic work environments. Men receive plaudits for speaking on panels about diversity, while implementing return-to-office policies that disproportionately impact women. Our industry has perfected the art of empty words.
For the women at the sharp edges of the industry, there are two questions I hear on an almost weekly basis. Firstly, how can we get men to care about the issues that continue to decimate women’s careers, from sexual harassment to ageism and maternity discrimination? Secondly, how can the women pushing for change on the issues that matter maintain the pace in their careers in an unrelenting and unpredictable environment?
The answers to these two existential challenges are not found in simply urging women to be more resilient. Women won’t bounce back forever.
The resilience myth
Instead of collectively rolling our eyes at the notion that women are overwhelmed in the workplace, now is the time to listen to the reality of women’s lived experiences. World Mental Health Day might be over for another year, but addressing burnout must be more than an annual event in our collective calendar.
According to Deloitte’s 2025 Women at Work report, only half of women describe their mental health as good, and just four in 10 women say they feel able to switch off from work.
Under 60% of women rate their physical health and well-being as good or extremely good. At the same time, almost a quarter (24%) of women experience health challenges due to menstruation, menopause or fertility challenges.
Look around your organisation and consider the disproportionate burden the women you work alongside face. Consider the undeniable fact that women often bear the emotional burden at home and in the office. At a time of brutal consolidation and cutbacks across the industry, it is women who are disproportionately left picking up the pieces.
When you consider that for over a quarter of women, their experience of work is one of working through high levels of pain and symptoms without taking time off, it is unsurprising that many women feel as if they are running on empty.
We need women to win
The biggest myth in leadership is that resilience is born from relentlessness. The fundamental truth is that humans made of flesh and bone do not bounce back as if made of plastic. Setting a sustainable pace is the key to a happy and healthy career.
Every week, I am inspired by women in our industry who aren’t endlessly bouncing back but building something new entirely.
Shelina Janmohamed, director of consumer equality at Ogilvy, wrote the most comprehensive study into consumer experience and ethnicity ever. She has also opened up an entirely new conversation on the reality of navigating caring responsibilities.
Emma Harris, CEO of Glow London, successfully proved the power of honesty with a viral LinkedIn post sharing the brutal reality of her heart attack. Three years on, her rallying cry to “slow the fuck down” continues to change hearts and minds across the industry and beyond.
Nishma Robb, as co-founder of HERA Media, is not just saying women’s voices matter; she is building a platform to ensure they will be heard. The UK’s first video podcast network to focus on stories through a female lens provides a much-needed platform.
These women are successfully redefining what progress means.
Overcoming overwhelm
Yet while women continue to raise the bar, the reality remains that all too many brilliant women are stuck in a loop of believing they have to prove themselves constantly.
As an industry, we continue to treat women’s energy as an all-you-can-eat buffet. Yet research underlines that we leave women’s plates empty by endlessly questioning their ability.
According to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace report, over half (54%) of women have experienced competence-based microaggressions, such as comments or actions that undermine their skills and expertise. Some 38% of women have had their judgment questioned in their area of expertise. 39% of women report they are spoken over or interrupted more than others. Is it any wonder that women are exhausted?
Expecting women to bounce back from these everyday microaggressions constantly is bordering on barbaric. We can and we must do more to tangibly support women in our workplaces. Burnout is not inevitable.
According to Deloitte, when asked what employers could do to support women in the workplace, the top three responses were: provide opportunities to advance (43%), offer flexible working for all employees, regardless of gender or caregiving responsibilities (37%), and ensure they are not regularly working beyond their agreed hours (32%). Yet leaders continue to abdicate responsibility for unsustainable workloads and presenteeism.
Puncturing the diversity fatigue
If we were to be honest about why we are failing to make progress on equality in the media industry, the answer is simple: we do not care enough to make change a priority. Equality is just another unpaid job for women to add to their never-ending to-do list.
We do not recognise that women’s expertise is routinely diminished and overlooked. We do not take industry-wide action to close the gender pay gap. Women are still pushed out of the media industry while on maternity leave. Gendered ageism is rife.
Yet, all too often, the men with the biggest profiles, platforms, and power in the media industry are silent when it comes to addressing inequality.
Why are we not doing more to champion and advocate for flexible working? Why do we not take women’s safety seriously? Why do we look the other way as we lose another brilliant woman in the media industry to overwork or bullying? We must not be content to look the other way as brilliant women’s careers are rubbed out like a stain.
There is so much more we can collectively, commercially, and individually do to elevate and invest in women. But to do that, we must be honest about the barriers and biases women still face.
Maintaining momentum in a volatile market isn’t easy, but women cannot win alone. We need to collectively turn the tide on the diversity fatigue which threatens to move the media industry backwards. We must invest in women.
We cannot afford to become numb to the experiences of others. In an increasingly automated and AI-driven industry, our empathy cannot be outsourced to an algorithm. So, isn’t it time we collectively embraced the power of the biggest differentiator we all hold, regardless of our gender: our ability to care deeply about our work and, most importantly, the brilliant people we get to work alongside.
Let’s stop taking women’s grit for granted.
Nicola Kemp has spent over two decades writing about diversity, equality and inclusion in media. She is now editorial director at Creativebrief and writes for The Media Leader each month.