Jacinda Ardern has just stepped down as Prime Minister of New Zealand, and is it just me or are all the girl bosses just too exhausted to girl boss? They are hanging up their blazers, which makes sense because women are doing too much.
In an emotional statement, Ardern explained that she’d hit her capacity and said: “I am leaving because with such a privileged job comes to a big responsibility. The responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead – and also when you’re not.
“I know when I have enough left in the tank to do it justice.”
Ardern’s also a mum to a four-year-old daughter and has led her country through her pregnancy and a pandemic. No wonder the woman is exhausted.
Interestingly, Arden isn’t the first high-profile woman to leave a very important job recently, there’s been a mass exodus.
Ash Barty shocked everyone last year when she announced she was retiring from tennis just after she’d won the Australian Open. Equally Leigh Sales definitely surprised people when she announced she’d be departing from ABC’s 7.30.
Powerful women seem to finally be working out that having it all means not having much left for yourself.
In Barty’s case, since retirement, she has now announced she is pregnant, and I think it would be fair to guess that she may have looked around at her fast-paced life and realised if she wanted to be a mum, she’d need to slow down.
In Sales’ case, she’s a single mum of two boys and was also the journalist most likely to hold our politicians to account.
After announcing her retirement, Sales told 2GB, “My boys want me to be home more in the evening. When they were little, it was fine, because I could hang out with them in the morning.
“I feel bad if I’m kind of exhausted and wanting them to go to bed because I think that’s not fair.”
See? It doesn’t matter how much you girl boss, sometimes the load is just too heavy to carry.
We’ve all been here for the girl boss wave.
Firstly, women were told they couldn’t have it all, and being a mother would be their only identity if they had children.
Then women were told they could have it all and – not just that they could have it all – but that they should!
Women should have babies, careers, toned bodies, make big money and have the perfect marriage and they should do all of that and not miss a single child’s birthday or promotion.
At first, women were just so happy to have a seat at the table they’d eat there no matter how tired/exhausted/underpaid/overworked they were.
Then the pandemic hit, or maybe everyone’s just tired, but women are working out that they have been sold a dream that can never be a reality. Women can’t have it all, and why the hell are women the only ones being told they should attempt to?
Men have never been expected to do it all – because no one can do it all!
Traditionally their role was to be a provider, and now we expect men to do more at home, but they aren’t taking on the load like women.
The ABS has reported that Australian women STILL outweigh men with the amount of unpaid work they do for the household.
Around 45 per cent of women spend more than five hours each week looking after their children, while more than a third of women spend more than 20 hours a week with their kids. In comparison, around a third (32 per cent) of Aussie men spend more than five hours a week looking after their kids, while just 17 per cent do more than 20 hours.
You see? The maths isn’t adding up. The Australian workforce is made up of 47.4 per cent of women, but still, with all the extra expectation that comes with being a woman, women are now providing and still doing the bulk of the family load – and eventually, something has to give.
In Ardern, Sales and Barty’s cases, they were privileged enough to take a step back but for most women, deciding to earn less money isn’t a decision they can make.
So, instead, they are working, mothering and quietly suffering, probably thinking, I don’t want it all – at least not the female version of it.