This Internation Women’s Day we’re exploring how we can ‘give’ to gain. This topic is coming at a key time for gender advancement, as a 2025 UN report laid out a harsh reality, women’s rights are slipping away with one in four countries having seen women’s rights erode over the past year, battered by weakening democracies and legal erosion.
It can feel overwhelming at times to find a way through and feel like you’re contributing to advancing women’s right in a world that seems to go the opposite direction at times. Today I’m going to explore a small, but very impactful way to do so, namely, the power of sharing. Specifically, the power of sharing the cost of success.
I’ve been reflecting on this because, at times, there feels to be a deep disconnect between the success we celebrate and the cost of that success for women. We talk about empowerment, leadership pipelines, smashing glass ceilings — yet many women who reach those heights quietly describe exhaustion, scrutiny, guilt, and isolation. If success is the goal, why does it so often feel like a penalty?
How do we answer the question that, despite decades of gender initiatives, senior leadership remains stubbornly male-dominated? Why do women still leave organisations at higher rates mid-career? Why do so many capable women hesitate to put themselves forward, even when they are ready?
The questions keep coming. The honest conversations about the cost of success are rarer.
Many women pay what could be described as a “success tax” — the additional, often invisible burdens that accompany achievement. These are not written into contracts, yet they shape day-to-day experience profoundly.
They can include:
None of this appears on a performance review form. Yet it consumes time, energy, and confidence — all finite resources.
Interestingly, many women do not speak openly about these experiences. There is an implicit expectation to be grateful, resilient, and low-maintenance. A successful woman who acknowledges difficulty risks being perceived as ungrateful or incapable — a double bind that discourages honesty.
If success carries extra burdens, then sharing knowledge about those burdens becomes a form of support for those women on the way up. Areas for sharing can include:
An area for sharing that deserves a bit of specific attention is guilt. Many women experience internal conflict when they succeed, this guilt can extend from earning more than peers to feeling like you’re not meeting expectations that society likes to lay on women.
My personal experience with guilt comes from my role as a mum. I’ve been fortunate to be raised by several strong women (including two grandmothers that combined raised a total of 15 children) and have never felt like I had to apologise for being successful. This changed when I became a mum. There is nothing quite like the guilt you feel dropping your baby off at nursery and walking away to go to the office. Luckily, I feel that there is much more room to talk about these experiences nowadays. I feel much less alone in my guilt because I have colleagues that go through the same and are open about it.
This is a direct example about the impact of sharing, and how it can encourage women to focus on their career as well as on their role as a mum. International Women’s Day often emphasises inspiration, stories of trailblazers and milestones achieved. These narratives are important, but they are incomplete without an honest examination of what it takes to remain in those roles.
1. Share information openly: Salary ranges, promotion criteria, and organisational processes should not feel like insider secrets. Transparency reduces inequality and builds trust.
2. Sponsor, not just mentor: Lifting someone up in the workplace by backing their work, calling out when others take credit and supporting them to take the step up is extremely impactful, and goes beyond being a mentor.
3. Distribute invisible labour more fairly: Track who is doing committee work, mentoring, event planning, and emotional support tasks. Ensure these contributions are recognised and shared.
4. Normalise honest conversations about trade-offs: Create environments where leaders can discuss challenges without fear of reputational damage.
5. Amplify, don’t appropriate: Publicly credit ideas and achievements. Visibility matters.
6. Encourage sustainable success, not heroic burnout: Model boundaries, flexibility, and realistic expectations from the top.
https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/content/women-at-work-global-outlook.html
