I hosted a panel for International Women’s Day, about the familiar narrative that resurfaced in late 2025: that women are pulling back at work because of an “ambition gap.” What became immediately clear how deeply this framing misses the mark.

The conversation didn’t center on whether women want leadership or growth. It centered on what happens when effort, care, emotional labor, and adaptation are constantly required, but not translated into power, advancement, or sustainable performance.

What’s being called an “ambition gap” is actually a systems gap. Women are not lacking ambition; we’re navigating workplaces and care structures that were never designed to convert their effort into equitable advancement, power, and sustainability.

Invisible labor is propping up both work and home, and women are carrying a disproportionate share of it. From emotional labor, mentoring, team glue work, and change management at work to caregiving, logistics, and household coordination at home, women are often sustaining systems without that labor being recognized, measured, or rewarded.

Real progress requires redesign, not rhetoric. The solution is not asking women to adapt harder or optimize themselves further. It is building accountability into leadership, talent systems, AI adoption, workplace design, and care infrastructure so organizations measure and reward what actually drives healthy performance.

5 biggest actionable takeaways

(1) Reframe the issue from “ambition” to “support and structure.” - Stop treating women’s advancement as an individual motivation problem. Start asking:

• Are promotion criteria clear and fair?

• Is flexibility penalized?

• Are caregiving realities accounted for?

• Are women receiving the same sponsorship and support as men?

(2) Audit the invisible work that keeps organizations running - The panel repeatedly pointed to “glue work” that women often absorb without recognition. Organizations should explicitly identify this labor, decide who is carrying it, and incorporate it into workload planning, performance reviews, and advancement decisions.

• mentoring and onboarding

• emotional labor and team support

• culture holding

• change management

• informal coordination and follow-through

(3) Build accountability into business systems, not side conversations - Several panelists stressed that progress happens when these issues are treated like any other strategic KPI. That means tracking:

• representation across levels and functions

• promotion equity

• pay equity

• retention

• belonging and lived experience

• sponsorship access

• AI training access

• whether flexibility creates career penalties

(4) Redesign manager practices around real human transition points - One of the most practical points came from Stacey: don’t assume what support looks like. Ask. For example, after parental leave or during high-burden life periods, managers should have explicit conversations such as:

• What do you want your return to look like?

• What schedule actually works right now?

• What do you need in the first 1–2 months?

• What responsibilities should be adjusted or phased?

(5) Treat AI readiness as a gender and leadership issue, not just a tech issue - The discussion made clear that AI transformation is accelerating existing inequities. Women may be more exposed to displacement while having less influence over the systems being designed. Action steps include:

• ensure women get early access to AI training and tools

• include women in AI strategy and deployment decisions

• teach AI in psychologically safe learning environments

• audit who is being left out of upskilling

• engage male decision-makers as allies, especially where they control capital, hiring, and technical direction

What stayed with me most from the conversation is that this is not a story about women opting out. It’s a story about how work is evolving faster than our structures are. We are in a period of rapid transformation driven by AI, economic uncertainty, and shifting expectations around caregiving and leadership.

In moments like this, narratives matter. If we continue to frame complex structural friction as individual motivation problems, we risk designing workplaces that extract more while enabling less.

But if we are willing to ask harder questions, about invisible labor, about power, about what performance really looks like, we have an opportunity to build systems where ambition can actually be sustained. Not just for women, but for everyone navigating the realities of modern work.

Featured Panelists:

• Dr. Anne Welsh, Executive Coach, Clinical Psychologist

• Dr. Felicia Newhouse, Founder, AI-Powered Women @ MIT

• Nicole Herrera Santiago, Keynote Speaker, Workplace Expert, Career Coach

• Stacey Messier, General Manager, Cambridge Innovation Center