Remember the Girlboss? The entrepreneurial woman who hustled and ‘leant in’ to work opportunities, climbing the career ladder with the ferocity of a lion? Turns out she was a myth.
In real life, women are not just imprisoned by the glass ceiling. They’re also having to battle the sticky floor, a little-known phenomenon that traps them in roles they are overqualified for.
I’m Every Woman
The idea of a working woman is nothing new. Yet the expectation that women will be the ones to sacrifice their careers to care for ailing relatives has prevailed. Forty-seven per cent of women aged 16 to 64 have performed unpaid childcare duties in the last six months, whilst over one in five in the same age group have provided unpaid care for an elderly or disabled adult. Why is that? Well, the UK has the worst access to childcare in Europe, yet its costs are among the highest globally. We also currently face a shortage of adult social care workers. When all is considered, the role of carer and childminder predominantly falls on the shoulders of women.
Consequently, women either have to take extended career breaks or work part-time to make time to care for relatives, whether that be a child, a partner or a parent. But their decision, through no fault of their own, will have lifelong consequences. Too often, unpaid female carers find themselves ensnared in lower-grade jobs, as part-time roles offer little opportunity to climb back up the career ladder. As such, many women and especially middle-aged women, find themselves in inferior positions and with lower pay compared to what they had in their thirties.
Man! I Feel Like a Woman!
Another factor behind the sticky floor phenomenon is unconscious sexism, particularly from bosses, which is preventing women from being taken seriously at work. After sifting through 25,000 performance reviews from nearly 300 organisations, a 2024 study by Textio revealed that an astronomical 78 per cent of women were described as ‘emotional,’ compared to just 11 per cent of men. It concluded that biased language, which focused on an employee’s personal attributes such as friendliness (or lack thereof) rather than their performance, was mainly used to describe female workers. Meanwhile, words like ‘intelligent’ were overwhelmingly reserved for men.
But this is hardly surprising. Watch any football match, and you’ll witness male managers throwing their heads in their hands and stomping about the edge of the pitch, screaming at anything with two legs if they feel there has been a slight injustice against their team. No one will bat an eyelid. Yet female managers have been described as erratic, abrasive and overdramatic for displaying identical behaviour. Regardless of whether you work in a stadium or an office, unconscious sexism is an issue plaguing nearly every workplace.
When men display emotion at work, they are praised for being ‘passionate’ about their job. When a woman does it, she’s branded ‘emotional’ and ‘difficult.’ A 2022 study by Psychology of Women found that calling female employees emotional ‘undermines their credibility’ and impacts their ability to succeed. Whether they are subsequently taken less seriously during meetings or overlooked for promotion is not as important as the reason leading to this behaviour.
‘It’s clear that language bias in performance feedback remains a significant barrier for women … to achieve their full potential,’ says Elizabeth Willetts, founder of Investing in Women. ‘This bias not only impacts individual confidence and career trajectories, it also contributes to systemic inequities such as the gender pay gap and underrepresentation in leadership roles.’
Still a Man’s World
We have discussed how caring duties and unconscious gender bias can hold women back at work, contributing to the sticky floor phenomenon. But what if some are actively rejecting career progression? A growing wave of evidence suggests that female employees are ‘consciously unbossing’ and refusing to rise through company ranks. Reasons for this vary, but a survey conducted by Employment Hero found that over two-thirds (69 per cent) of women in the UK experienced workplace burnout last year, compared to just over half of men (56 per cent). It was concluded that women were more stressed and had poorer mental health than their male counterparts. CEO Artis Rozentals explains why this is the case:
‘Hustle culture puts work at the centre of life. Long working hours are praised and glorified. Time off is seen as laziness,’ she says.
When you combine this with the added pressures of caring responsibilities and having to work harder than your male colleagues to be taken seriously, you can see why burnout is more common amongst the fairer sex. When faced with such a hostile working environment, is it any wonder that a worrying 38 per cent of women intend to leave their job within the year? To put it bluntly, women don’t want to work in a man’s world anymore. Instead of climbing the corporate ladder, quite a few are now switching jobs or opting to remain in lower-paid roles that leave them enough time to prioritise family and ambitions outside of work. For too long, women have had to put up with the endless grind, navigating a workplace that was never really built for them. Now, they are rebelling against hustle culture and finding joy through work-life balance.
Girl, Confused
To quote the great philosopher Charli XCX: ‘It’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl.’ Agreed. Though strides have been made for women’s empowerment, writing this article felt like I’d been transported back to the 1950s, which cannot be a good sign.
Women’s ambitions remain constrained by the sticky floor phenomenon that traps too many of us in low-paying jobs. Yet those who are lucky enough to avoid the sticky floor have found themselves jumping from the frying pan and into the fire of our relentless hustle culture. For decades, ladies and gents alike have been fed the narrative that if they just ‘work harder,’ they will undoubtedly succeed — perhaps, but at the expense of their health and leisure. The high burnout rate is pushing more women to choose positions they are overqualified for. And who can blame them?
In a world full of uncertainties, one thing is for sure: the Girlboss is dead.
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