After more than 30 years in senior HR and executive roles, I’ve witnessed a quiet pattern play out behind closed doors: talented, capable, high-performing women slowly burning out long before they ever get close to the so-called “glass ceiling.”
For years, I thought this was just the cost of ambition. Now I know it’s something else, a burnout floor that far too many women fall through.
Burnout is no longer an individual problem; it is a systemic one. And while organisations are becoming more aware of its impact on productivity, retention, and culture, the experience of women requires a different lens.
The 2025 CEW Senior Executive Census reports that nine out of ten ASX 300 CEOs are men. We often talk about breaking through barriers, but perhaps we also need to ask: What forces are pushing women down?
From where I’ve sat across boardrooms, restructures, executive interviews, and countless conversations with exhausted female leaders the answer is clear: burnout is taking women out of the pipeline long before promotion is even an option. They are often self-selecting out as an act of self-preservation.
Why Burnout Impacts Women Differently
The women I’ve worked with over the years all share a common thread: they are carrying more than anyone can see. I know the weight of that load personally. Like many women, I spent years balancing the demands of executive roles and consulting roles with family, managing a household, supporting ageing parents, the inevitable personal challenges of life and trying to “hold it all together” with a smile until I couldn’t. This began my search for answers.
This invisible load is not theoretical… it is lived, and it accumulates.
On top of an already demanding workload, women also face:
- Unequal recognition and advancement The pressure to prove yourself twice over — to be competent, composed, and constantly “on.”
- Emotional labour Women are often the unofficial counsellors, mediators, and nurturers in teams. Valuable work, but often unrecognised or remunerated.
- Cultural gender expectations The message that we must excel at work, maintain the home, support everyone around us, and stay “resilient” while doing it.
And then, at the exact stage where many women are stepping into senior leadership, another layer appears: the physical and emotional demands of perimenopause and menopause. These include energy shifts, sleep changes, emotional regulation becomes harder, focus becomes unpredictable, and communication becomes a strain. Trying to perform at an elite level while navigating these transitions, often silently, is an enormous ask.
What Organisations Lose When They Ignore Women’s Burnout
Burnout rarely announces itself. Women don’t storm out, they often quietly fade:
- taking roles with less responsibility
- stepping back from leadership pathways
- leaving organisations altogether
- or leaving entire industries
This is how talent drains away without a ripple, and how organisations lose the depth, experience, and diversity that drive performance. Currently, only 31% of ASX 300 executive leadership roles are held by women. From Gender Equity Insights 2025 The Power of Balance BCEC WGEA report, “Female representation among CEOs and senior executives has plateaued at around 25 per cent. Only one in four organisations now report balanced leadership teams, a share that has barely moved in five years.” What is interesting is this Government Statutory Agency considers a balanced leadership team as 40% representation by women. Have we given up on 50%? The Power of Balance Report
Burnout is Part of the Reason the Pipeline keeps Leaking – What Organisations Can Do Differently
Burnout can’t be solved with a wellbeing day and a mindfulness webinar. Women don’t need more pressure to be “resilient”; they need systems that support them.
1. Help Women Understand and Self-Manage Burnout
Give women the tools to understand their burnout cycle, develop boundaries, and break deeply embedded beliefs and behaviours that deplete energy and drive over-functioning. This is the work I now focus on through Journey Back to You, and I’ve seen the shift it can create.
2. Offer Genuine Flexibility
Not just remote work, but adaptable hours, job-sharing, seasonal flexibility during acute life stages, and performance measures that don’t silently punish caregiving.
3. Audit Bias in Work Allocation
Track who is doing the invisible emotional and relational labour. Recognise it. Reward it. Redistribute it.
4. Normalise Conversations About Women’s Health
Make menopause, fertility treatments, and hormonal transitions part of the wellbeing conversation, not a taboo topic. Policy changes, leave options, and leadership education matter.
5. Encourage Access to Evidence-Based Medical Support
Women deserve professional gynaecological support for perimenopause and menopause, not the pressure to “cope” with symptoms. With modern HRT and specialist care, women can thrive through this stage, not quietly suffer through it. Unfortunately, most GPs and telehealth services are not trained in menopause care, leaving many women unsupported on over-the-counter supplements, trying to manage everything. Women need qualified education on their options.
The Bottom Line
Women are not burning out because they are weak. They are burning out because the system of work and home is demanding more than is humanly sustainable, and they are doing it silently.
If organisations genuinely want more women in leadership, they need to look beyond the glass ceiling and address the burnout floor. Because until the floor is reinforced, women will keep falling through it long before they ever have a chance to rise.
If you’re reading this and thinking of one woman in your team, or maybe yourself, who is exhausted, overwhelmed, or losing their spark, please don’t ignore it. There are two pathways I offer to support women before burnout derails their career and their wellbeing.
- Organisational Consulting I work with HR teams and leaders to understand the burnout dynamics in their workplace, build supportive structures, and create programs that actually shift behaviour, boundaries, and belief systems, not just resilience levels. We focus on balancing professional performance with personal wellbeing.
- Journey Back to You Women’s Retreat A confidential, guided retreat in Forster designed for women who need a circuit-breaker, space to step away, reset, and reconnect with themselves so they can return with clarity, balance, and renewed capacity.