Your Women’s Leadership Program Has Raised Awareness. But Has it Closed the Gap?
Sixty years of research. The gap hasn't closed — it's widened.
Since 1965, Harvard Business Review has tracked how men and women experience leadership, repeating the same survey every 20 years. The latest wave, published in 2026, found what researchers called "progress on the surface, deterioration underneath."
Six in ten senior-level women report frequent burnout
The highest level ever recorded in the study's history. (McKinsey, Women in the Workplace 2025)
83% of women now say they must be more exceptional than men to succeed — up from 68% in 2006. Only 28% of men agree with the same statement. (HBR, "What 60 Years of Data Reveals About How Men and Women Experience Leadership," 2026)
Nearly 25% of entry-level and senior-level women who express reluctance about promotion cite personal obligations as a key barrier — Compared to just 15% of men. (McKinsey, Women in the Workplace 2025)2026)
Women hold just 29% of C-suite roles — unchanged from 2024, and underrepresented at every level of the pipeline for the 11th consecutive year. (McKinsey, Women in the Workplace 2025)
83% of women now say they must be more exceptional than men to succeed — up from 68% in 2006. Only 28% of men agree with the same statement. (HBR, "What 60 Years of Data Reveals About How Men and Women Experience Leadership," 2026)
Systems of inequality don’t just live out there. They also live in here.
Internalized conditioning directs our beliefs and our behaviours
Author Elise Loehnen's research into how women internalize cultural conditioning describes it precisely — women, she writes, are "coached, above all, to prioritize likability as the surest path to safety and survival."
That training doesn't stay theoretical. It shows up as behavior, automatically, often before we've noticed we're doing it. We put our hand up for a task a junior male colleague should be doing. We soften our voice in a moment of disagreement instead of holding it. We take on the extra load at home to be the good wife, the good mom, the good employee.
These aren't personal quirks. They're patterns, rooted in a system none of us chose, and they've become the invisible strings guiding behavior — and shaping who gets seen, sponsored, and promoted.
The truth is, the system needs to change, and it hasn't yet.
In the meantime, the work is twofold:
Seeing and disrupting the ways we comply with a system that constantly questions our worth,
Building the awareness and self advocacy skills to name inequality, call people in to a vision of change, for ourselves, and the people around us.
When a culture gets wired into physiology — into beliefs, automatic behavior, the nervous system's own narratives — you can't think your way out of it.
Insight tells you the pattern is there. It doesn't unwind it. That's why confidence tips and inspiration alone don't move the numbers, no matter how many times you try them.
Services
1:1 Coaching
Self-Advocacy Coaching for Senior Women Leaders Who Want to Increase Visibility and Voice.
ERG Facilitations
Group coaching and learning sessions for Women’s ERGs
Keynotes + Workshops
Engaging and Experiential workshops for women navigating male-dominated environments
Why This Matters
Women leaders often carry an additional layer of invisible work at work — managing perceptions, reading the room, regulating emotions, and ensuring their voices are heard.
Over time this can lead to over-effort, second-guessing, and burnout.
At the same time, the demands of leadership have changed. Leaders today must regulate themselves under pressure, navigate complex interpersonal dynamics, and make decisions in uncertainty.
Many of these capabilities cannot be accessed through thinking alone.
They rely on the intelligence of the body.
Embodied leadership helps women leaders work with their internal state so they can respond thoughtfully rather than react automatically — strengthening presence, resilience, and influence.
Keynote: The Body Advantage - Women, Leadership, and Sustainable Power
A grounded exploration of how reconnecting with the body supports authentic, effective, and sustainable leadership.
Women leaders carry an additional layer of invisible work in their professional lives — managing perceptions, navigating expectations, reading the room carefully, and ensuring their voices are heard in environments that were often not designed with them in mind.
Over time, this creates a real toll. In the process of meeting these demands, many women lose connection with one of the most powerful resources available to them in leadership — the intelligence of the body.
This disconnection often shows up as chronic over-effort, diminished clarity, and burnout that no amount of mindset work can resolve.
At the same time, the demands of leadership itself have changed. Leaders today are expected to regulate themselves under pressure, navigate complex interpersonal dynamics, build psychological safety, collaborate across silos, and make sound decisions in uncertainty. Yet many of these capabilities cannot be accessed through thinking alone.
They rely on the intelligence of the body.
In this experiential keynote, Liz explores how reconnecting with the body strengthens three critical leadership capacities:
Capacity: The ability to regulate stress, repattern leadership-limiting behaviours and lead sustainably without burning out.
Connection: The ability to navigate power dynamics, increase visibiity, and build trust in complex interpersonal environments.
Creation: The ability to see systems clearly and generate new possibilities for leadership and influence.
This keynote introduces a different path: learning to work with the body as a source of information, regulation, and direction. Participants experience how embodied awareness supports leadership that is more grounded, authentic, and sustainable, allowing women to expand their influence without sacrificing their energy or themselves in the process.
Outcomes:
Participants will leave with:
A deeper understanding of how disconnection from the body contributes to over-effort and burnout
An experiential understanding of how the body shapes leadership presence, confidence, and impact
A framework for understanding leadership through three capacities: Capacity, Connection, and Creation
A foundational practice leaders can use immediately to increase regulation and self-trust under pressure
Insight into how embodied awareness helps women sustain their leadership while navigating environments that often place additional, and sometimes invisible, demands on them
Ideal for:
Women’s leadership conferences • Women’s ERGs and Associations • Organizations focused on wellbeing, retention, and sustainable leadership
