The burden of adaptation should no longer be placed on women. It’s time to act on the structure.
Le Club des Brillantes. This is the monthly mastermind I run with committed, brilliant, cultured, ambitious women who have taken one of my women’s leadership programs.
They tick a lot of the Growth Mindset, Enlightened Leadership and Relationship Intelligence boxes. They’re the ones who’ve been working on themselves to make the difference with the others for a long time.
And yet…
One of them said today, in a low voice but with poignant authenticity:
“I give myself permission to crack. I can’t take it anymore.”
Then the tears came. Too much mental load. Too much pressure. Too much desire to do well. And this sentence, which suspended time:
“But what do I still need to improve at home?”
It’s not a question of individual resilience. It’s not a question of training, better diary keeping, reverse to-do lists or morning rituals. She’s already done a lot.
It’s not this woman who needs to fix herself. It’s the system and the context in which she evolves.
In her book “The Fix”, Michelle P.King King, an organizational psychologist with five degrees, identifies 17 systemic obstacles that women encounter throughout their careers, even (and especially) when they are competent, motivated and “playing the game”.
Here are a few examples:
- The myth of the ideal collaborator, tailor-made for someone who has no emotions at work, who doesn’t question himself, and who doesn’t worry about family logistics.
- The double bind of women: as a woman, when you impose yourself, you’re a nuisance and a bitch; when you hold back, you’re nice and stupid.
- Denial of challenges like: “With us there’s no problem, we treat everyone the same.”
- And the chronic fatigue of always having to “prove” one’s legitimacy, even after a 15-year career,
- These barriers are not “invisible” to those who experience them. They’re just normalized in the dominant culture.
You’ll tell me, but what do we do then, Dominique?
with courage…
- Stop asking women to adapt to systems that exhaust them;
- We stop asking women to play the ideal collaborator;
- We redefine what effective leadership is, integrating the expression of vision, team OKRs, relational intelligence and discernment;
- HR processes, assessment criteria, performance models and mentoring are audited for fairness;
- We share the leader’s clear, unambiguous code of conduct,
- We meet regularly in supervisory meetings to adjust roles and responsibilities; to express our exhaustion and anger – without this being interpreted as an escape or weakness.
- And we confront the people in power who are in denial about this reality, through the code of conduct.
When a brilliant, invested, experienced woman starts crying and says she can’t take it anymore… it’s not a personal failure.
It’s a collective wake-up call.
And if you’re a manager, a leader, or just a silent witness, the real question is: are you going to keep “fixing” the ones that flounder? Or are you going to fix what’s making them flounder?
