Why Career Breaks Are More Costly Now Than Ever for Women in Leadership

Women's Leadership Programme

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Career breaks have always penalised women more than men. As AI accelerates skill obsolescence and reshapes the nature of work, time away from the workplace risks setting women back further and faster than ever before. Organisations that invest in re-entry pathways, continuous learning, and bias-resistant systems will not only strengthen gender equity but also build more resilient leadership pipelines and gain a lasting competitive advantage.

Career breaks never affected men and women equally. For many women, time away from work means a motherhood penalty, stalled career growth, lower earnings, and fewer opportunities to reach leadership roles.

The numbers bear this out at the top: women represent 42% of the global workforce but hold only 31.7% of senior leadership positions. Despite years of focus on gender diversity, representation at the top has increased by less than 1% over the past six years.

AI is poised to make this challenge even harder. As jobs, skills, and workflows evolve more rapidly, time away from work can create a wider gap between where an employee left off and where the organisation has since moved. Research from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) warns that generative AI is likely to affect women disproportionately, with female-dominated occupations twice as likely to be exposed to the technology.

AI-powered skill obsolescence

The ILO report identifies three structural reasons why women bear a disproportionate share of this exposure:

Women are overrepresented in jobs most susceptible to automation
Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) occupations
AI systems can inherit and reproduce the gender biases embedded in societies

The pace of change has altered the economics of career breaks. When skills evolve more rapidly, time away from work can become more costly for both employees and organisations. Helping experienced professionals re-enter is therefore not only an inclusion priority but also a strategic one.

Deepak Jena

Assistant Professor of Strategy at ISB

The ILO report reveals that nearly 29% of female-dominated occupations are exposed to generative AI replacement. For male-dominated occupations, it is 16%. The gap nearly triples when we look at the highest-risk jobs, which are the ones most likely to disappear. 16% of female-dominated roles sit in that danger zone, versus just 3% of male-dominated roles. Essentially, the more replaceable a job is, the more likely it is that a woman is doing it.

Inaction is costly

Women’s representation in leadership is often discussed as a matter of equality. But research increasingly suggests it is also a matter of competitive advantage. Studies published in Nature show that women leaders can influence the way organisations innovate4. This encourages broader perspectives, stronger collaboration and more inclusive decision-making. McKinsey estimates that closing gender gaps in workforce participation could add up to $28 trillion to annual global GDP, highlighting the economic value locked within an underused talent pool.

The case is already clear, both ethically and economically. The real question is: are leaders willing to act on it?

What leaders can learn about designing inclusion?

Organisations that are serious about crafting resilient, future-ready workforces are already shifting from reactive diversity to designed inclusion.

They are:

Re-skilling at scale: Leaders should embed learning systems with a specific focus on employees returning to work, so that they can rapidly close skill gaps in AI-enabled environments.
Career continuity pathways: Create formal returnship and mid-career re-entry programmes that help people rebuild their careers, rather than simply fill vacancies. Structured programmes with clear ownership and manager support are far more effective at helping employees successfully return to work.
Bias-resistant systems: Review AI tools, performance evaluations and promotion processes regularly to identify and remove hidden gender bias. Technologies also reproduce existing inequalities if organisations do not actively examine how decisions are made.
Sponsorship, not just mentorship: Leaders need to actively advocate for women by recommending them for high-visibility projects, promotions and career-defining roles. Without this support, talented employees may continue to be overlooked for advancement.

A defining leadership moment

AI does not arrive in a neutral workplace. It enters organisations with existing assumptions about talent, performance and potential. If those assumptions remain unexamined, new tools may simply accelerate old patterns.

For leaders, the challenge is not only deciding where to deploy AI but also examining the systems around it - who gets access to opportunities, whose capabilities are recognised, and whose careers continue to progress.