Carrying the Load: How Institutional Systems Constrain Women’s Leadership Advancement

Abstract

Despite decades of effort to advance women in leadership, progress has stalled. In their analysis of women’s gains over the past 50 years, England et al. (2020) note that “progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or stalled” (p. 6990). At current rates, it will take another 134 years to achieve global gender parity in economic participation and opportunity (World Economic Forum, 2024). Individual-level solutions — mentoring programs, executive presence workshops, negotiation training — have not moved the needle. This paper argues that they cannot because they are aimed at the wrong target. The barriers shaping women’s careers are not inside women. They are embedded in the multiple societal institutions that govern how time is expected to be used — the family, the community, the government, the labor market, and the corporation. Each of these institutional spheres operates according to its own logic, and each sends a consistent message: women’s time is available for care work. These messages compound across a career and a lifetime, producing what researchers call “time inequity” — a structural pattern, not a personal failure. Drawing on published research across sociology, economics, organizational behavior, and leadership development, this paper maps the interinstitutional system that shapes women’s leadership opportunities. It offers organizational leaders, people leaders, and leadership development practitioners a diagnostic framework for identifying where the system is generating friction — and what each can do from where they stand.