After spending 20 years uninterrupted being the ‘lean in’ generation of the workplace, women now seem to want to step back and lean away from their positions of power. I remember Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s second-in-command, telling women that they should be the ones ‘leaning in’ in her 2013 book of the same name.

The term means to step into new avenues, be the leader you want to be, and don’t be afraid of being a boss in the workplace. It was indicative of the ‘have it all’ mindset from the 80s and 90s. But while women were in fact becoming the most highly qualified cohort of women in human history, something changed in the run-up to 2024.

That year, S&P Global found that women’s share of executive positions in listed American companies fell for the first time in 2023. One year later, the percentage of women taking new board seats fell to 38% from 42%, and the fall in women reaching high places dwindled.

In 2022, Sandberg called it quits and took an early retirement.

The late Dawn Foster produced a literary response of her own, titled Lean Out, which challenged Sandberg’s insistence that women can have it all by highlighting the disparity between men and women in domestic labour and caretaking responsibilities.

She argued that it’s a dangerous path to attempt to lean into work and demands that could risk burnout for a woman who is already burdened with too much to do at home. Foster claimed that ‘the only reason that Sandberg’s life is at all possible is because she employs low-paid women to clean her house, do the grocery shopping, look after her children, run her finances… and her advice wouldn’t help those women at all.’

In essence, she revealed the hole in Sandberg’s life ethos: she was only able to ‘lean in’ because she employed others to do the domestic tasks on her behalf, effectively freeing up her time and lessening her workload. Like many women, the knowledge that these tasks, in combination with work, were too much to manage alone (unless of course you had a compliant ‘wife’ of your own?!)

As a result, studies have since found that university-educated American women with young families are continuously quitting the workforce. Lean In, Sandberg’s non-profit polled both men and women and asked them to indicate their interest in climbing the corporate ladder.

There, it was found that between 2019 and 2023, on either side, the desire to climb rose from seven in ten to eight in ten. By 2025, it had risen to nearly nine in ten for men, but to 69% for women. Since then, it has stagnated, with more women refusing to climb than ever before.

From the gender pay gap refusing to close to equal proportions, to childcare costs increasing – it’s not easy being a high-climbing woman. So, many have instead been forced to ‘lean out’ which is a bit depressing really….

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