Silence is Expensive

Women leaders are leaving companies at the highest rates ever recorded. CNBC  Axios 

Not because of AI. Not because the economy is scary. Because companies are making truly impressive own goals—like forcing everyone back to offices five days a week and acting shocked when senior women hand in their notice.

But here's the bit that should keep you up at night: The women who stayed? They've gone quiet too.

Leadership teams are spiraling about ChatGPT stealing jobs while ignoring the fact that half their actual intelligence is sitting in meetings with solutions they desperately need, staying silent because speaking up has become prohibitively expensive.

It's like having a fire alarm and choosing not to hear it because you're too busy worrying about whether the smoke detector batteries might run out in 2027.

The Talent Shredder

Companies hire brilliant women with genuinely good intentions about building diverse leadership.

Then they run them through a system that ensures only 81 women get promoted for every 100 men. Last year it was 87. Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report  The broken rung isn't healing. It's snapping.

Here's How It Breaks

Picture 200 people eligible for promotion to manager. Half men, half women. Similar performance, similar potential.

Promotions are announced: 100 men get promoted. Only 81 women do. Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report 

Not because the men were better. Because the women were "not quite ready yet" or "should wait another cycle."

Now you have 100 male managers. 81 female managers.

Next promotion cycle draws from that pool. Even if everything were suddenly fair from here on (spoiler: it's not), the numbers can never recover.

The pipeline doesn't leak at the top. It breaks at the bottom. Everything after that is just math with a side of denial.

In male-dominated industries—tech, finance, engineering, construction—the shredder runs at double speed.

What's Actually Happening In Those Meetings

Women in these companies don't feel respected. Or valued. Or particularly welcome, if we're being honest.

They're interrupted at twice the rate men are. Gender Action Portal  Slate  They have a baby and suddenly their competence ratings drop 10%. Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? | Gender Action Portal  Same person. Same brain. New person attached to their hip.

Their ideas evaporate into the ether on Monday. By Wednesday, David presents the exact same idea and gets applauded for his "strategic thinking."

It's like being a ghost, except you still have to show up for the 8am and no one can hear you say "that's literally what I said five minutes ago."

The Impossible Trick

Here's the fun part about being a "good woman" in a professional setting:

You must be nurturing AND competitive (but not too competitive—that's unbecoming)
Strong AND accommodating
Decisive AND never emotional
A team player AND always winning
Collaborative AND never difficult

Oh, and grateful. Always grateful. Especially when someone steals your idea.

These requirements aren't compatible. There is literally no way to thread this needle.

A woman speaks with the same directness a man uses three times before lunch? Bossy. Bitchy. Difficult. Aggressive. "Has she always been like this?"

By the time women reach leadership, they've spent 25 years learning to navigate contradictory demands that shift depending on who's watching. Be confident but not threatening. Take charge but don't be bossy. Win but make everyone comfortable about it.

And then we seat them at the leadership table and genuinely wonder why they don't just speak up.

Because they've done the math. Speaking up costs more than it pays.

The Part That Should Make You Furious

Want to know what's truly spectacular?

Companies with 30% women in leadership see 15% higher profitability. Study: Firms with More Women in the C-Suite Are More Profitable | PIIE 

Fifteen. Percent.

Not 1.5%. Not "marginally better if you squint at the data." Fifteen percent higher profitability.

So naturally, companies are... moving backwards. Fewer women getting promoted year over year. Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report 

Meanwhile, they're hemorrhaging £45 million annually in a 10,000-person company just replacing people (15% turnover at over £30,000 per replacement). Ballards LLP  HRreview 

Mothers' incomes are dropping 44% after their first child. Earnings and Income Penalties for Motherhood: Estimates for British Women Using the Individual Synthetic Control Method | European Sociological Review | Oxford Academic  Women with "PTA volunteer" on their CV are 79% less likely to get hired. Motherhood penalty - Wikipedia 

And here's my favorite: Fathers? They earn 25% MORE than men without children. Mothers Earned 35 Percent Less than Fathers in 2024 | Bankrate 

Same kid. Opposite outcome.

Companies have the data. They have the business case. They have spreadsheets with very clear numbers.

And they're still running the shredder at full speed while having quarterly meetings about "why aren't we retaining talent?"

It's performance art at this point.

The Perimenopause Trap (Or: The Third Time Women Get Penalized For Biology)

Just when women have survived the motherhood penalty, when the kids are finally older and less intensive, when they're ready to step into senior leadership with two decades of expertise...

Perimenopause arrives.

Sleepless nights. Brain fog. Memory lapses that make you forget what you were saying mid-sentence. Rage that won't stay neatly contained in the box where you've kept it for 25 years. Overwhelm that hits without warning. And a bullshit detector that's suddenly operating at maximum sensitivity.

Companies call it burnout. It's not burnout. It's biology.

But women can't say that. Because admitting your body is doing something inconvenient looks like you're "not coping." Not as stable as the men. Not reliable anymore. Better hire someone who doesn't have... complications.

Never mind that women in leadership bring 15% higher profitability. Study: Firms with More Women in the C-Suite Are More Profitable | PIIE  Never mind that these are the same women who've been exceeding targets for 20 years while managing contradictory expectations and stolen credit and constant interruptions.

Their bodies are doing something at exactly the wrong career moment. So they either pretend everything's fine—smile through the brain fog, mask the exhaustion, regulate the rage—or they leave.

We accommodate bathroom breaks without question. We recognize sleep as a basic human need. But flexible approaches to perimenopause? That's apparently asking too much.

So women stay quiet. They don't speak up about what's actually happening because they've learned that honesty costs more than silence. They struggle alone, get labeled "burned out," and either get passed over for the leadership roles they're finally ready for—or they walk.

And companies lose senior women right at the moment their expertise is most valuable. Then scratch their heads about the "pipeline problem."

What's Actually Missing

These women are overqualified. Overeducated. Over-prepared in every technical sense.

What they weren't taught—because nobody teaches this—is how to command a room in spaces designed to shut them out. How to speak with impact when they've spent 25 years learning to soften everything. How to hold the floor when interruption is the default. How to claim credit before someone else does.

Not because they lack ability. Because they've been trained since childhood to do the opposite.

This isn't about adding capabilities to women who are already brilliant. It's about unlearning the conditioning that keeps brilliant people quiet.

Speaking with authority without triggering backlash. Establishing boundaries before interruptions start. Making ideas land so they get credit. Leading decisively while navigating double standards that don't apply to men.

And here's the critical part: Women need to speak up about the real issues. The motherhood penalty. Perimenopause. The impossible standards. The stolen credit. The interruptions.

Not to ask for pity. To state facts. To say "this is what's actually happening, and here's what would help."

But they've spent 25 years learning that speaking up about their actual needs gets them labeled difficult, emotional, or not committed enough.

If we're solving the wrong problems, we'll never get the right solutions. Squeezing a lemon when you want orange juice doesn't work, no matter how hard you squeeze.

Companies need to hear what's actually going on. Women need to be able to say it without career suicide.

Here's What Actually Works

Stop running the talent shredder. Track promotion rates. Fix the broken rung. Make the numbers make sense.

Invest in impact and presence coaching. Not "smile more" workshops. Real coaching in how to command authority in male-dominated industries where the rules were written for men.

Fix your meeting culture. Make interruptions unacceptable. Track who speaks. Call it out when women's ideas vanish and reappear under someone else's name.

End the motherhood penalty. And acknowledge perimenopause exists. Real flexibility. Not performative "we value balance" while quietly sidelining mothers and labeling perimenopausal women "burned out."

While your competitors are capturing that 15% profitability boost, you're explaining to the board why the pipeline is still "a work in progress."

The broken rung is breaking further. Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report  Waiting won't fix it.

The Fix

For 25 years, I've coached women in male-dominated industries to speak with impact, command authority, and lead with clarity that actually gets heard.

Not by teaching them to be something they're not. By helping them unlearn the conditioning that keeps overqualified women quiet—and giving them the tools to deploy their considerable intelligence in rooms that don't want to hear it.

The women in your company have the strategy. The solutions. The intelligence you need.

They need to be heard. On the issues that actually matter.

This is modern leadership coaching: bold, clear, direct. It removes the constraints. It doesn't add 100 self-improvement tasks that presume they're not good enough.

They are good enough. The system isn't.

Stop hemorrhaging talent. Stop leaving 15% profitability on the table. Stop running meetings where half your intelligence stays silent because they've learned that speaking up costs too much.

Because every day they can't speak? You're paying for it.