Every International Women’s Day, organisations around the world reaffirm their commitment to gender equality. Statements are issued, panels are held, and progress is celebrated. Yet beneath these symbolic gestures lies an uncomfortable truth: women remain significantly underrepresented in leadership roles across industries and geographies.

This persistence is often framed as a workplace issue, one that can be solved through mentoring programmes, leadership training, or confidence-building initiatives. But this framing is incomplete. The forces shaping women’s leadership outcomes extend far beyond office walls. They are rooted in structural realities and cultural expectations that continue to define who leads, how leadership is perceived, and whose ambition is legitimised.

Until these deeper forces are addressed, progress will remain uneven and fragile.

The structural reality behind “choice”

Women’s leadership trajectories are profoundly shaped by how societies organise work, care and time.

Globally, women continue to perform the majority of unpaid care work, childcare, eldercare, household management, regardless of income level or professional status. This invisible labour is not merely a private matter; it is a structural condition with direct career consequences. Leadership roles are often designed around assumptions of uninterrupted availability, long working hours, and geographic mobility, assumptions that align more closely with traditional male career patterns than with the lived realities of most women.

When leadership is implicitly defined by constant presence rather than outcomes, women are disproportionately excluded from opportunities that build visibility and credibility: crisis roles, international assignments, or high-stakes projects that require extended availability. Many women are not opting out of leadership. They are navigating systems that make leadership costlier for them than for their male peers.

These structural constraints are further reinforced by insufficient public and corporate infrastructure. Limited access to affordable childcare, inadequate parental leave policies, and poor eldercare support force women to absorb systemic gaps individually. The result is career interruption, slowed progression, or the need to accept roles below one’s capability in exchange for flexibility.

Leadership, in such contexts, becomes less about merit and more about who can absorb personal sacrifice.

The penalty of non-linear careers

Despite decades of change in workforce demographics, many leadership pipelines still reward linear, uninterrupted career paths. Career breaks, often taken for caregiving, are treated as signals of reduced commitment rather than as neutral life stages.

Women who step away temporarily or reduce hours during critical mid-career years often find themselves sidelined from leadership tracks altogether. The irony is striking: leadership qualities such as resilience, prioritisation, empathy, and crisis management are often sharpened through caregiving experiences, yet these capabilities remain undervalued in formal leadership assessment.

In effect, organisations penalise women for navigating the very social structures that societies depend upon to function.

Culture defines who “looks” like a leader.

Beyond structure lies culture – the more insidious and enduring barrier.

Leadership continues to be unconsciously associated with masculinity. Authority is expected to be assertive, decisive, and emotionally restrained. While these traits are not inherently male, they have historically been coded as such, shaping perceptions of credibility and competence.

Women leaders who embody these traits often encounter resistance. Assertiveness may be interpreted as aggression; decisiveness as insensitivity. Conversely, women who lead collaboratively or empathetically may be viewed as lacking gravitas. This creates a narrow behavioural corridor, a double bind, where women must constantly calibrate their leadership style to avoid negative judgment.

Men rarely face equivalent scrutiny. Their leadership behaviours are more likely to be interpreted generously, as expressions of confidence or vision rather than character flaws.

The cost of this double bind is not only personal. It limits organisational leadership diversity by discouraging authentic leadership expression and reinforcing conformity to outdated norms.

Motherhood and the myth of diminished ambition

Few cultural biases are as persistent as those surrounding motherhood.

Women with children are frequently assumed to be less ambitious, less committed, or less capable of handling senior responsibility. These assumptions are rarely articulated openly, yet they shape decisions around promotions, stretch assignments, and succession planning. Leadership potential becomes conflated with availability rather than effectiveness.

Men, by contrast, often benefit from a “fatherhood premium”, perceived as more stable or reliable once they have families. This asymmetry reflects deeply rooted cultural narratives about gender roles rather than evidence-based assessments of performance.

In an era where flexible work and digital collaboration have redefined productivity, these assumptions are increasingly outdated. Yet culture often lags behind capability.

Risk aversion reinforces the status quo.

Cultural norms become most visible in moments of uncertainty. During crises, organisational restructuring, or leadership transitions, decision-makers often default to familiar profiles. Risk aversion leads to sameness.

Women, still underrepresented at senior levels, are frequently viewed as “non-traditional” leadership choices, implicitly riskier than candidates who resemble past incumbents. This preference for familiarity reinforces homogeneity, even as organisations publicly champion diversity and inclusion.

Ironically, it is precisely during periods of volatility that diverse leadership perspectives are most valuable. Yet culture often prioritises comfort over capability.

Why fixing women misses the point

Too often, the response to women’s underrepresentation in leadership is to focus on individual adaptation: confidence training, resilience workshops, or advice on “leaning in”. While personal development has value, it risks misdiagnosing a systemic problem.

The issue is not that women lack ambition, competence, or resilience. It is that leadership systems and cultural expectations continue to privilege a narrow model of success – one that aligns with historical norms rather than contemporary realities.

True progress requires re-examining how leadership is defined, rewarded, and legitimised. It requires recognising that unpaid care work is an economic issue, that cultural bias is a governance issue, and that leadership diversity is not a concession but a strategic imperative.

A broader question for International Women’s Day

On this International Women’s Day, the most important question is not how women can better prepare themselves for leadership. It is how societies and organisations can redesign leadership itself to reflect how people live, work, and contribute today.

Until leadership is measured by impact rather than presence, by judgment rather than conformity, and by outcomes rather than outdated expectations, gender equality will remain elusive.

The challenge before us is not to help women fit into existing systems – but to build systems worthy of the talent already within them.

-- BERNAMA

Ivlynn Yap is the Executive Chairman of Citrine One Group, a Crisis Communication Lead Consultant, holds an MSc in Economic Crime Management and is the author of the memoir 'Choices'.