By Marcelina Horrillo Husillos, Journalist and Correspondent at The European Business Review 

Women are breaking up with companies at a highest rate than men, and this phenomenon proves that professional women of today prioritise their well-being and their professional demands, rather that the mere fact of keeping a job. Because they are revaluating their values and priorities, some are even switching industries or becoming entrepreneurs.

The latest jobs data from the United States government shows that between January and July 2025, 212,000 women left the workforce at the same time that 44,000 men entered it.

Also, a 2024 Women in the Workplace study sponsored by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, women leaders are leaving corporate America at the highest rate in years. In fact, the gap between women and men leaving is the largest it’s ever been.

A released Women in the Workplace Report 2022 from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, exposed that we are in the midst of a “Great Breakup,” where women leaders are demanding more from work, and are more likely to switch jobs to get their needs met.

Professional women of today are selective and prioritize their well-being in the work place, and they are seeking a good work-life balance too. If a workplace is a toxic environment allowing microaggressions or harassment, if there is lack of corporate structure, or if the organisation is failing to provide managerial support and career opportunities for advancement; competitive working women are ready to move and seek other positions, and often quitting a job becomes the inflection point to initiate their own businesses.

Unequal pay

A Pew Research Center analysis confirmed that in 2022 women earned approximately 82% of what men did. One explanation is that even though women have increased their presence in the C-suite, they are still overrepresented in lower-paying roles relative to their share of the workforce. Gender discrimination and unconscious gender bias may also contribute to the wage discrepancy. Not surprisingly, many of these women are deciding to start their own businesses. Because while entrepreneurship carries risk, it also has the potential to reap greater rewards over time.

Harassment and microaggressions

Microaggressions can be around gender or race and include the use of sexist language or subtle comments that are disrespectful and sometimes toxic. One example is when a female employee shares an idea in a meeting, but then a male co-worker receives credit for it when he repeats it. According to the McKinsey data, women in leadership are also far more likely than men to have colleagues who imply that they aren’t qualified for their jobs. And finally, women leaders are twice as likely as their male colleagues to be mistaken for someone more junior.

Lack of managerial support

Having a supportive manager is one of the top three factors women consider when deciding whether to join or stay with a company.

Yet there’s a growing gap between what’s expected of managers and how they’re being trained and rewarded. According to the report, less than 50% of manager trainings address topics such as how to prevent employee burnout and make sure promotions are equitable. Moreover, only 25% of companies factor employee retention and 34% consider progress on DEI in managers’ performance evaluations.

On another hand, women are more likely than men to experience microaggressions that undermine their authority. For example, the report finds 37% of women leaders have had a coworker get credit for their idea, compared to 27% of men leaders, and women leaders are two times as likely as men leaders to be mistaken for someone more junior.

No work-life balance

The research finds that young women under 30 are prioritizing work-life balance more highly than other women: Almost two-thirds of women under 30 say they would be more interested in advancing if they saw senior leaders who had the work-life balance they want. At the same time, they’re ambitious: 58% of women under 30 say advancement has become more important to them over the past two years, compared to 31% of women leaders. Young women may be redefining what an effective leader might look like.

Stress and burnout

Working women in the U.S. are among the most stressed employees globally, according to new research from Gallup. And as they continue to undertake more responsibilities at home and at work, they are experiencing burnout and exhaustion at higher rates than men.

Work-related stress is taking a physical and mental toll on female leaders. According to the Deloitte report, Women @ Work 2022: A Global Outlook, women are experiencing dangerously high levels of burnout. The situation is so severe that 53% of respondents say their stress levels are higher than a year ago, with almost half feeling exhausted. As a result, nearly 40% of those women looking for new employment cited burnout as the main reason.

Limited career advancement

More than half (58%) of women under 30 say career advancement has become more important to them over the past two years, compared to 31% of women leaders.

Despite modest gains in representation in leadership, only 1 in 4 C-Suite leaders is a woman, the report notes. Far fewer women than men are being promoted to managerial roles: For every 100 men who are promoted from an entry-level to a manager position, only 87 women and 82 women of color are promoted.

While women are just as likely to want to move up in the organization, it is more difficult for them to advance. In research from MIT Sloan, although women received higher performance ratings than their male colleagues, they received 8.3% lower ratings for potential than men. Potential scores are subjective and reflect how much their managers believed they would develop in the future. Because those ratings strongly predict promotions, female employees were 14% less likely to be promoted than male ones.

Conclusion

Professional women of today don’t want business as usual, they demand positions that add value to their careers and their lives, jobs that collaborate in keeping a good work-life balance, and places that stand for toxic-free work environments. Many women also embrace tools like a QR Code Business Card to simplify networking effortlessly.

The demands of professional women of today reflect the aims of a modern society with a more sophisticated approach, where ethical standards are at the top of the list. The great breakup is a clear symptom that today’s corporate world is still designed in an old-fashioned way and based on backwards approaches where the most basic needs of the individual are often dismissed, overseen or neglected.

The traditional vertical approach in the corporate world, is gradually being replaced by a more horizontal and equitable view, where human needs have a voice which must be heard when crafting company policies and job specs.

Building an equitable workplace where women can thrive starts with fixing the “broken rung,”; for every 100 men promoted and hired to manager, only 72 women are promoted and hired. This broken rung results in more women getting stuck at the entry level and fewer women becoming managers.

The rising concern about mental health in the public debate, it also raises the need of reviewing and upgrading office environments to more human friendly work places: without harassment and toxic atmospheres.

If companies want to retain valuable talent, they need to create an equitable workplace where professionally competitive women can thrive, and yet the corporate world would have to listen to their demands.