The Hidden Pressure Points in Women’s Careers

International Women’s Day is often a moment to recognise how far we’ve come – but this year, my reflections look different. As both a leader and a mother navigating the realities many women face, I see first-hand how progress can feel fragile.

New findings from Grant Thornton’s Women in Business 2026 report show that the number of women leading UK mid‑market companies has fallen to its lowest level in eight years. Female CEO representation has fallen sharply in the UK, dropping from 24% to 17% in a year, even as female CEO numbers rise globally. While 2026 should be a year in which we celebrate greater representation, we’re instead confronting a troubling truth: the pipeline is shrinking at the very moment external expectations around gender balance are intensifying.

These numbers tell one part of the story. The other part is more personal, and far less visible in the data.

As a woman, a Partner at Grant Thornton UK and a mother of four children under 13-years old, I’ve lived the pressures behind these trends, both as a leader and an individual. My husband is a Financial Director, and like so many parents in dual‑career households, we juggle the multitudes: mum, wife, professional, cook, cleaner, chauffeur, chair of the Parent Teacher Association and crisis‑manager-in-chief. My evenings swing between school clubs, client calls, phonics homework and trying – somehow – to remember the costumes for World Book Day – including my own, as I always volunteer to read at school for the occasion. I love each part of my life, but it is a lot.

These pressures don’t stop women from aspiring to leadership – but they do make it harder to both reach and sustain roles at the top. When we talk about why female leadership numbers are falling, we can’t ignore the reality that the system still assumes women will carry more of the “invisible load”: the logistics, the planning, the emotional labour and the domestic mental project management that enables a household to function. These responsibilities don’t feature in corporate KPIs, but they shape careers every day.

The data reflects this. Women’s participation in the UK workforce is declining. Fewer women are returning to work after maternity leave and the intersection with the UK’s long‑running productivity puzzle couldn’t be clearer. When women step back, scale down, or move out of the workforce altogether, businesses lose talent, experience, diversity of thought and leadership potential. The economic cost is real.

What’s particularly striking in this year’s research is that the UK’s drop in female leadership comes despite increasing pressure from outside. Today, 34% of UK mid‑market businesses have been asked by new investors to provide proof of gender balance. Scrutiny from regulators has almost doubled. The message from the market is clear: diversity isn’t nice to have; it’s a marker of resilience, quality and long‑term value.

It’s clear businesses also understand this, with 43% noting they remain committed to gender equality initiatives – higher than the global average. Many are putting real focus on senior leadership pipelines, promotions and equitable bonus structures.

But even with all this commitment, the outcomes don’t appear to reflect the effort. Only 14% of businesses say their gender balance strategies are helping attract new employees. Just 20% believe these programmes are improving the retention of female leaders and a mere 17% report better decision-making as a result.

This disconnect matters. It means we’re given women more encouragement, but not more support.

In the grand scheme of things, symbolic gestures or celebratory hashtags make very little difference to the lived experience of women in the workplace. What is needed is more deeply rooted structural change: recognising that careers look different for everyone, building cultures that accommodate periods of intense family pressure and creating leadership pathways where flexibility is embedded, not negotiated.

Because here’s the truth: women aren’t opting out. They’re being pushed out by systems that haven’t adapted to the realities of modern working families. The women I speak to aren’t lacking aspiration. They lack time, viable childcare options and psychological space. They’re lacking workplaces designed for the world as it is, not the world as it was.

This International Women’s Day, we must move beyond platitudes and confront the data head-on. The UK cannot afford to lose a generation of female leaders – not socially, not culturally and certainly not economically. Equally, businesses cannot solve their productivity challenges while half the talent pool faces barriers that the other half does not.

We have the opportunity to reverse this trend. To rebuild systems that recognise the multitudes women carry. To design leadership pathways that don’t require women to choose between ambition and family, and to create workplaces where every woman has the support to lead not just once she reaches the top.