Restructures Are Part of Business. Wiping Out Women’s Careers Shouldn’t Be.
If restructures are inevitable, so is the need for a gender lens. Skip it, and women’s careers collapse, leaders lose credibility, and organisations fail.
Restructures are part of business, but wiping out women’s careers and weakening leadership pipelines doesn’t have to be. When leaders fail to apply a gender lens, women’s careers collapse, leaders lose credibility, and organisations fail. Here’s what must change, and what organisations, leaders, and women themselves need to do differently.
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About Me
I’m a globally recognised DEI strategist and author of The Leadership Compass. I work with organisations that are fed up with fig leaves and lip service, and with ambitious women who are fed up with being sidelined, to create workplaces and careers that actually work for women.
One of the opening lines in my group coaching session last week was:
“Wow! Should I think about a career change? Because look at all the redundancies that are happening.”
She wasn’t wrong. Two of Australia’s major banks have announced redundancies in the past fortnight. Another bank flagged downsizing just weeks earlier. Add in major ASX-listed companies, some with women in my Lead to Soar Network, who are also restructuring. It’s redundancy season.
Sure, job losses make headlines, but the other headlines that are coming through are that investors are frustrated, too. This year’s ASX reporting season made it clear: they’re tired of waiting for returns on “transformations” that have soaked up investment for years. The result? Companies are being told to deliver value, fast. Sadly, this too often translates into "Let's shrink our way to greatness." Except no company ever achieved greatness by cutting its way there.
Now, I don’t argue with the need for organisations to restructure their workforces and the way that work is done. Organisations must constantly adjust to stay competitive. What I am calling out is the absence of two critical things: a gender equity lens and personal career strategy.
Where Organisations Are Getting It Wrong
In Hour of Power, women told me about restructures where dozens of roles disappeared, many belonging to senior women. Communication was poor, transparency was lacking, and the pattern felt all too familiar: women’s roles appeared to be the first to be cut.
Truth Bomb: if you’ve got a gender equity strategy, it must be applied at the point of decision-making, not after the fact. Otherwise, it’s not a strategy, It's a corporate fig leaf.
When organisations fail to run a gender lens over workforce decisions, the outcome is never a surprise. Women’s careers are too often the collateral damage, leadership pipelines are gutted of capable women, and any credibility your so-called gender equity strategy had goes up in smoke.
What Organisations Must Do
Apply a gender equity lens to every talent decision, including restructuring, promotions, appointments, and exits.
Demand evidence that choices align with gender equity goals and targets.
Recognise that cutting roles where women are concentrated, marketing, HR, and comms, sets your organisation back, not forward.
Leaders, here’s what you need to do:
You also need to run a gender equity lens over every single decision about talent — restructures, promotions, appointments, and exits. No excuses.
Communicate like adults. Transparency and accountability build trust. Silence and spin destroy it.
Protect your pipeline. If women are always the first to go, your leadership is broken. Fix it.
Stop with symbolic gestures. ERGs, mentoring, and inclusion programs must connect to business outcomes, or they’re just corporate cosplay.
What Women Must Do
Here’s the other side of the equation. If you’re a woman in leadership, or aspiring to be, you need to be deliberate about making yourself irreplaceable. That means:
Invest in your continuous professional development. Please don’t wait for your employer to do it for you.
Positioning yourself so your potential is visible, known, and being realised.
Linking your work to strategic and financial outcomes so your credibility is beyond question.
Truth Bomb: Restructures handled badly can erase careers. But women who are visible, credible, and known for delivering impact are far harder to erase.
The Call to Action
Organisations: stop treating gender equity like it’s optional. It’s 2025, FFS. I am beyond sick of saying this.
Truth Bomb: Every restructure without a gender lens is corporate sabotage. Women lose, your pipeline collapses, and your credibility dies a slow, public death.
Leaders: your job is to make the hard calls, but you don’t get a free pass on equity. Run the gender lens over every decision, communicate with ruthless transparency, and protect the women in your leadership pipeline. That’s not extra credit — that’s leadership.
Women: DO NOT leave your future in the hands of organisations and faceless decision makers who may or may not get it right. Invest in yourself, make your potential known, and position yourself as the leader your organisation can’t afford to lose.
Truth Bomb: The goddess helps those who help themselves.
And if you’re ready to take that next deliberate step? Join me this Friday at the Lead to Soar information session. It’s where ambitious women learn to build the strategic, social, and emotional intelligence that makes them credible, visible, and future-proof. Can’t make it live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recording.
Truth Bomb: No gender lens? No credibility. Stop bullshitting your people, your investors, and yourselves.
More About Me
If you‘re new around here, hello. I’m Michelle Redfern, and I’m fed up with workplaces that don’t work for women.
What lights a fire in my tummy and gives me the reason to leap out of bed every day is to close the leadership gender gap and support women navigating a system that was never designed for them.
Here’s how I can help you:
Organisations: Truth Bomb, a gender equity strategy that isn’t embedded in your decision-making is bullshit. I help you design and deliver strategies that actually shift the dial. No fig leaves, no fluff, just results.
Leaders: If you want credibility, stop treating equity like extra credit. I’ll show you how to lead with it baked into every decision, so your people trust you and your performance AND pipeline is strong.
Women: Stop waiting for permission. Through the Lead to Soar Network and my book, The Leadership Compass, I provide ambitious women with the tools, skills, and (very) direct advice to build careers that soar.
If you’re ready to stop talking and start doing, I can help.
Thank you for writing this. I have heard of so many well-qualified, high positioned women who just happen to lose their jobs due to restructuring or without even reason. One female physician was terminated without cause within a month of after returning from maternity leave.
I would love to learn how your framework for change can be applied to female physicians. The culture in medical training and beyond can be very toxic and unsupportive, particularly around times of life transitions.
Wow - so many good points made here. I am very impacted by this situation, spat out by a large corporate who took over a little company just to achieve numbers and this is like the 5th time in my career. Yet another career break to explain and a brutal job market where there is no transparency, lots of competition and high expectations. Getting job interviews is like winning the lottery and there is no support.