Ep. 383 Why women are leaving corporate – and what they’re building instead

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

The conversation around women leaving corporate careers has reached a tipping point – and the numbers back it up. This International Women’s Day episode unpacks the real structural reasons behind the exodus, why it isn’t an ambition gap, and what women are quietly building on the other side.

Key moments

[00:00] Introduction – Why women leaving corporate is the conversation of the moment, tied to International Women’s Day.

[01:00] The LinkedIn post that sparked a wave – Anna’s end-of-2025 post on women leaving the workforce generated more response than almost anything she’d shared in years.

[01:45] The data behind the exodus – Key statistics on women leaving the workforce in the US and UK, and what’s actually driving it.

[02:44] Not an ambition gap, a rational response – Why lower interest in promotion reflects a broken system, not a lack of drive.

[04:15] The opt-in narrative – How women are quietly building businesses and portfolio careers rather than leaning back in.

[06:07] Redefining ambition – Why impact, ownership, health and presence are replacing titles and corner offices as markers of success.

[07:04] What this means for those still inside corporate – The questions leaders need to ask if they want to stop losing their best people.

[08:26] The trap of recreating old patterns – Why leaving corporate is only step one, and how the same habits can follow you into your own business.

[09:33] What would actually move the needle – From honest conversations about structural barriers to genuinely redesigning how work gets done.

[10:29] Resources and what’s coming – Anna’s book Leaving the Corporate 9 to 5 and a teaser for something new in the community.

Key resources

• Leaving the Corporate 9 to 5 by Anna Lundberg – available on Amazon
• McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2025 report

Women leaving corporate

The recent LinkedIn post that I wrote – I wrote it just before Christmas, the end of 2025 – sparked more conversation than almost anything I’ve shared in years. And it was all around women leaving the workforce.

At the time, it was the Lean In report led by Sheryl Sandberg that identified an ambition gap. And my point was that it’s not an ambition gap, and it’s not the individual leaving who is the problem – it’s the system. And so with International Women’s Day this week, I thought that would be a really interesting place to start today.

There are all sorts of numbers that I’m sure you would have seen. In the US, for example, almost half a million women – more than 455,000 – left the workforce between January and August 2025. One of the largest non-pandemic drops on record. Around 58% were voluntary resignations, although they’re often forced choices – you can call it voluntary, but it’s forced because of the system, because of the environment. And in the UK, 1.56 million women were self-employed in 2024, up 12% over the past decade.

And I know I’m probably in the bubble given the work I do, but all I’ve seen on LinkedIn these last weeks are more and more people talking about it, and more and more women talking about themselves leaving.

So the media narrative is this ambition gap. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2025 report said that for the first time women actually show lower interest in promotion than men. But again, the point I made in the post was that this is not an ambition gap – it’s a rational response. In fact, the most reasonable response to a system that hasn’t evolved in years.

The data is so clear on what’s actually driving this. 42% of women who left cited caregiving and childcare costs as the primary reason. Nearly 40% said lack of flexibility pushed them out. And almost half of working women are reporting burnout. These are stats from sources like Catalyst and Deloitte Women at Work – very credible sources.

So this is not about women not wanting careers and businesses. It’s about the deal that’s on offer. The rigid nine to five. Presenteeism. Return to office mandates – after the pandemic very much showed that working from home and hybrid working was as effective, if not more effective than being in the office all the time. Leadership norms that were designed by and for people without those caregiving responsibilities. That deal is no longer working.

McKinsey’s stat was that women are less likely to receive sponsorship and stretch roles, because the game is structurally harder for women. When the system consistently extracts more from you than it gives back, then leaving is a pretty logical response.

Now, I left a long time ago – 2013 – and it was pre-children. But there was something obviously bubbling within me that felt like this is not the container that fits who I am or who I want to be. I remember at the time looking up to more senior leaders in the organisation who were incredible – I don’t mean this as a criticism of them – but a lot of us thought, I don’t know if I want to be who those people are. I don’t think I want to behave that way or work this way. That’s not quite the ladder I want to climb.

And what’s really important here is that these women are not mostly disappearing from meaningful work – we’re just choosing different containers. There’s so much talk now about building independent businesses, portfolio careers, solopreneur models that give you agency over time, income, and energy.

Some data from the UK: early-stage entrepreneurial activity among women has almost tripled since 2002 – from 3.5% to around 10% by 2024. 150,000 new UK companies were founded by women in 2022, more than double the 2018 figure. That’s the opt-in narrative.

I saw someone call this on Substack – and apologies, I don’t remember the name – but it wasn’t about leaning in, it wasn’t about quietly quitting, it was about quietly building. Women building alongside work, trying to diversify and strengthen their own position in the market, to allow them to leave and continue to pursue their ambition without being dependent on a structure that doesn’t support them.

These women aren’t giving up on ambition. They’re redefining what ambition looks like – in terms of impact, ownership, managing your health, being present, being there for school trips. It’s not about titles and corner offices for us.

I can’t claim that I left with such a sophisticated narrative in 2013, but there was definitely something at the time – and certainly since then – that has drawn me towards a very different narrative. Far from the rigid, old-school thinking of how a lot of companies are run.

So what does this mean for those who are still in corporate? If you’re a GM, HR, a senior woman still inside an organisation, the question isn’t how do we get women to lean back in – it’s what are we actually willing to redesign?

My work has always had two hats. I’ve always worn the hat of helping people who have opted out to build differently. But I’ve always wanted to go back into companies and help them redesign and rebuild for this new era. The economic case is straightforward: companies with more women in leadership perform better. Workforce participation gaps cost GDP points. And losing talented mid-career women is expensive – and largely avoidable.

What would actually help? Genuine flexibility – not just a remote work policy. Sponsorship, not just loose mentorship. This is my big one: redefining what leadership actually looks like, not just who does it. And measuring contribution, not hours. But many organisations aren’t moving fast enough, which is why the opt-out versus opt-in trend is going to continue.

And for those of us who have already left – the independent experts, the solopreneurs, the people who’ve already made the jump – leaving the system is only step one. The trap is that we can recreate the same patterns in our own business. We overwork, we undercharge, we say yes to everything, we lose the flexibility we left to find.

Building differently is a really conscious and importantly ongoing choice. It’s not something that happens automatically just because you left. You take your same habits, behaviours and mindset with you.

This is really where my work lives. I help people not just leave, but build something that actually works on their terms. That’s why I talk about the four-hour work day, the integrity rate you need to charge, the demand rhythm – all of that is in service of making the bigger picture possible.

International Women’s Day tends to produce a lot of noise – inspirational quotes, panel events, corporate announcements, and women being asked to speak for free. But let’s look at what would actually move the needle. Honest conversations about the structural barriers still in place. Real redesign of how work gets done. And for those of us who have already left, building something that’s genuinely different – not just a smaller version of what we escaped.

If you’re at the beginning of this journey – if you found this episode because of this topic – my first book, Leaving the Corporate 9 to 5, available on Amazon, is a great resource for anyone at that decision point or just past it. It’s a collection of 50 stories of people who left corporate to go freelance, build a portfolio career, start a business, or change sector entirely.

If you’re building independently and want to do it with more intention and better support, I’ve got something new coming in the next few weeks. Stay tuned – I’m building it and sharing it with people in my community first. If you’re already on the newsletter, you’ll be hearing about it.

Most importantly: let’s make the right decision for ourselves and our families – and if we have the energy and the time, let’s see what we can do to create change and really redesign how we work, so it works for all of us.

If this episode made you think differently about something, send it to one person who needs to hear it – not a mass share, just one specific person. That is how good conversations spread.