Get me out of here
The mass exodus of women from corporate spaces
Big business is failing women. Let’s just be frank about it.
Return-to-Office is trending. DEI initiatives are being rolled back. Layoff threats loom large, the pay gap is widening, inflation is rising, and advancement opportunities are shrinking. For women raising children or care for aging parents, this is an unsustainable amount of pressure. Even for those that aren’t, corporate environments feel increasingly hostile. Without flexible schedules, equal opportunity for growth, and pay equality, what would keep them there?
The juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.
The widely circulated Catalyst report supports these assertions. Nearly a half a million women left corporate America alone in the first eight months of 2025. It’s a trend that’s continuing as business belts tighten and leaders are asked to “do more with less.” That’s corporate speak for “we’re going to understaff you, but we still expect you to perform at the same level.”
What you won’t see in the data quite as clearly is the experience of the women who are leaving these roles. It’s hard to put into words and even harder to put into data. But I’ve personally seen:
A female head of PR asked to “book a different hotel next time” by a salesman who didn’t like the proximity of his hotel to an event venue. She was not responsible for booking hotels.
A female VP asked to take notes at a client meeting by a fellow VP who was, by all accounts, also literate.
A female account executive who was asked to leave a meeting to “go figure out lunch,” causing her to miss the rest of the client meeting.
These kinds of things happen to women at all levels. I’ve experienced them throughout my career, and every woman I know has more than one story exactly like it. While not necessarily nefarious, this kind of stuff has a quietly corrosive effect. Expecting that women will make the coffee, or write the follow up email, or figure out how to make the idea real is both minimizing and exhausting.
Difficult Women is a group for women who are quietly (or not so quietly) rejecting this bill of goods and forging their own paths. It’s a place for senior-level women to find community, connect, and collaborate. The number of women leaving traditional corporate roles is rising by the day. It’s becoming a movement: let’s join the march.