The workplace is at an inflection point. Hybrid working, new legislation and technological shifts, are changing how we work, lead and collaborate. Yet, amid this transformation, an old narrative has resurfaced – one that accuses women of undermining workplace performance.
This was the premise of a recent article in The New York Times, titled “Did women ruin the workplace?” The piece, based on a podcast debate between Ross Douthat, a columnist at the publisher, and two writers, Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, on whether workplaces have become “too feminised”.
The affirmative argument dated and dangerous. Reducing complex organisational challenges to a gendered blame game ignores the decades of research that demonstrates the opposite: women do not weaken workplace cultures, they strengthen them. Women help to broaden leadership perspectives, deepen collaboration and elevate decision making. When women thrive, organisations outperform, and the data shows this time and again. So why do such narratives persist?
Guilty until proven innocent
The root of the issue lies in stubborn societal inequalities that continue to define women’s everyday experiences at work. Research featured in my book, On Motivation: Women & Workplace Culture, shows that women are often treated as less credible until they repeatedly prove their competence, while men are more readily assumed to be capable until they demonstrate otherwise.
This ‘guilty-until-proven-innocent’ bias is so deeply embedded that it often goes unnoticed. Yet it shapes who gets promoted, who feels confident enough to speak up, whose authority is respected and who receives recognition. It also feeds the problem of male hubris and female humility, where men tend to overestimate their abilities while women underestimate theirs. No wonder imposter syndrome disproportionately affects women, with 54% experiencing it compared with 38% of men.
When men and women start from unequal positions, outdated narratives can easily stick. The conditions that lead people to take provocative headlines seriously are rooted in structural biases.
What is often overlooked is the demonstrable value women bring to workplace culture. I’ve interviewed many women who believe their core strengths are empathy, perspective, multitasking and the ability to see around corners – all historically gendered attributes. Too often, these qualities are dismissed under the pejorative banner of ‘soft skills’, despite the fact that they underpin effective leadership and high-performing teams. Cognitive diversity gives leaders a broader frame of reference for risk-taking, innovation and client insight. Ignoring this is not just unfair, it is commercially short-sighted.
Redesigning the workplace
Workplace dynamics should never devolve into a battle of the genders. The workplace is an ecosystem, and when it is designed for only one style of working, everyone suffers – men included. Rates of burnout, disengagement and distrust in leadership are rising across all demographics. Blaming women will not solve this; redesigning culture will.
Leaders who wish to build workplaces that truly thrive must focus on solving the real problems:
- They first must confront the gender authority gap. Collect data, map patterns, grade roles correctly and compare recognition, pay and promotion outcomes. Publishing the findings might feel fraught but it is both brave and progressive. Transparency builds accountability. Without a baseline, organisations will continue to reward confidence over competence.
- Companies then must create environments in which men and women can thrive equally. That means allowing for workplace flexibility, earning trust and clarifying performance expectations. It means recognising that presenteeism is not productivity: staff should be judged by what they produce, rather than where or when they produce it.
- Remember: mentorship and allyship are essential. The most effective interventions are small but consistent. These include calling out bias live, echoing and crediting women’s ideas, making space in meetings for voices that are often overlooked or encouraging senior women to model the leadership behaviours. Peer pressure is a powerful force for culture change.
- Lastly, senior leaders must take diversity seriously, not as a branding issue, but as a business imperative. While inclusivity and diversity may be desirable in their own right, inclusive environments also foster cognitive diversity, which is the true competitive advantage. When people with different lived experiences collaborate, the result is broader thinking and more innovative solutions.
Women aren’t ruining work, bad leadership is
The workplace is not being ruined by women. It is being reshaped by social, economic and technological forces that demand better leadership and more inclusion. Gendering these challenges distracts from the real work of creating cultures that people want to work in, where they feel valued, trusted and equipped to do their best.
It’s not merely workplace culture that is at stake – it is the future of work itself.
To solve these challenges, organisations must focus on fairness, not finger pointing. We need workplaces where women and men are assessed on equal terms. And we need leaders who recognise that culture is not a soft issue but a strategic driver of performance, retention and long-term success.
When half the population is treated as a liability, everyone loses. But when workplaces are designed for all, we all win.
Jenny Segal is a workplace-culture expert, finance professional and author of five books on workplace culture as a business asset.
The workplace is at an inflection point. Hybrid working, new legislation and technological shifts, are changing how we work, lead and collaborate. Yet, amid this transformation, an old narrative has resurfaced – one that accuses women of undermining workplace performance.
This was the premise of a recent article in The New York Times, titled “Did women ruin the workplace?” The piece, based on a podcast debate between Ross Douthat, a columnist at the publisher, and two writers, Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, on whether workplaces have become “too feminised”.
The affirmative argument dated and dangerous. Reducing complex organisational challenges to a gendered blame game ignores the decades of research that demonstrates the opposite: women do not weaken workplace cultures, they strengthen them. Women help to broaden leadership perspectives, deepen collaboration and elevate decision making. When women thrive, organisations outperform, and the data shows this time and again. So why do such narratives persist?
