Fix the system, not yourself

You are good at your job. You have worked hard to get here, you can navigate complexity, deliver results and bring people with you. And yet something feels harder than it should.

Maybe you are working twice as hard for the same recognition. Maybe you have watched less experienced colleagues move ahead. Maybe you have started to wonder whether you are the problem. You are probably not.

When women hit friction in their careers, the instinct is to look inward. What do I need to work on? Where am I falling short? That habit of reflection is one of your strengths, but it can also become a trap, because not every problem is yours to fix.

Sometimes the friction is structural. The system was not designed with you in mind, and no amount of personal development changes that. What feels like a confidence gap is often something else entirely: a set of conditions that were never built for you to thrive in.

The data backs this up. Women in management resign at consistently higher rates than their male counterparts. In superannuation and financial services, women remain underrepresented in the higher-paid, higher-influence roles despite strong representation elsewhere. With 92% of senior roles still structured around full-time, always-available work, leadership continues to be defined in ways that do not reflect most women's lives. That is not a personal failing. It's a design problem.

So what do you do with this?

The next time you feel the friction, resist the instinct to look inward first. Ask ‘is it an environment problem?’

Talk to other women at your level. If the same walls are appearing at the same points for more than one of you, that's not coincidence. That is data, and data is one of the most useful ways of highlighting inequity.

Think carefully about where you spend your energy. Not every system is worth fighting from the inside, and there is an important difference between an organisation that is trying to change and one that is simply asking you to tolerate things indefinitely. Your career has a finite runway, so use it well.

Use the influence you have built deliberately. Advocate for the women behind you and ask the uncomfortable questions in the rooms they are not yet in. Companies with a female CEO have 46% women in their executive teams, compared to an industry average of 31%. Who you bring with you matters as much as how far you go.

Finally, ask better questions of the organisations you work for. Not just what development is on offer, but what the actual conditions are. How are flexible working arrangements used in practice? Who gets promoted after a career break? Organisations serious about change can answer these questions clearly. 

Recognising that a problem is systemic is not an excuse or 'giving up'. It can be the beginning of a more honest conversation, which can give you freedom to stop directing energy inward and start directing it where it can actually make a difference.

At Nudge Leadership, we work with senior women and the organisations they lead, helping both understand what is personal, what is systemic, and what to do about it. If this resonates, we’d love to hear from you

References

Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre and Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Gender Equity Insights Report 2025. Covers Australian private sector employers.

Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Gender Equality Scorecard 2024-25. Based on reporting from 8,239 Australian employers covering more than 5 million employees.

Chief Executive Women, Senior Executive Census 2025. Based on ASX 300 companies.

According to the Financial Services Council's 2024 Women in Investment Management Survey, women make up just 27% of investment management teams in Australia, a figure that has barely shifted across four consecutive years of measurement

This article draws on thinking from Michael Cavanagh's work on leadership in complex systems at the University of Sydney.