Women Are Being Asked to Fix a Problem They Didn't Create
Women & Leadership · Research & Analysis
A new study uncovers a striking paradox: women in leadership roles simultaneously recognize systemic discrimination and yet place the responsibility for fixing gender inequity squarely on themselves.
Despite decades of research confirming that women are highly effective leaders, the gender leadership gap persists with remarkable stubbornness. Women hold just 29.3% of senior executive positions in the United States — and progress is glacially slow, with only a 1.4% increase between 2015 and 2020.
A new phenomenological study published in the Open Journal of Leadership asks a better question: not just why the gap exists, but how women themselves have come to internalize responsibility for closing it.
The findings are both illuminating and troubling. Researcher Kristina J. Szilak interviewed 15 women across the United States who were either working in or aspiring to leadership roles. What emerged was a paradox she terms the "cause and cure" dynamic: women who can clearly name the structural barriers they face nevertheless describe the solution to those barriers as primarily a personal, individual endeavor.
12 of 15 participants framed gender inequity as an individual obligation to fix
29.3% of U.S. senior executive positions held by women
2 of 15 participants named organizations as primarily responsible for change
The Paradox in Their Own Words
The study's most striking finding is how rarely institutional accountability appeared in participants' proposed solutions. When asked what it would take to improve gender equity in leadership, the overwhelming response centered on what women themselves must do — become more confident, self-promote, seek out mentors, support other women. Systemic discrimination was acknowledged, yet systemic change was largely absent from the conversation.
One participant captured the impossible bind succinctly: "You have to be confident, but not too confident." Another described years of accomplished work overshadowed by persistent self-doubt: "I could be in the job for ten years and still feel like I don't belong there." These aren't personal failings — they are, the research argues, the internalized products of cultural systems that have historically assigned women both moral responsibility and blame.
Women positioned themselves as both the cause of and cure for gender inequities in leadership — even as they named discrimination as a significant barrier.
Szilak, K.J. (2026) — Open Journal of Leadership
Inherited Culpability: A Historical Thread
To explain this paradox, Szilak draws on the concept of inherited culpability — the idea that cultural narratives stretching back millennia have positioned womanhood as inherently responsible for social disorder. From Eve and Pandora to modern workplace "empowerment" messaging, women have been told that the problems they face are theirs to solve through personal transformation.
This manifests in contemporary leadership culture in ways that can be easy to miss. Well-intentioned programs encouraging women to "lean in," speak up, and self-advocate are not wrong exactly — but they subtly reinforce the idea that the gender gap is a problem of women's confidence or visibility rather than a structural failure. When the gap persists despite these efforts, the implicit message is that the woman wasn't trying hard enough.
Four Key Findings
01
Awareness as a Burden, Not an Empowerment
Eleven of fifteen participants described women's self-education about their rights as a prerequisite for advancement — framing awareness not as something organizations should create, but as an individual obligation women must fulfill before they can legitimately lead.
02
Leadership Legitimacy Is Conditional for Women
Ten participants described leadership as something men inherit and women must earn through self-improvement, vigilance, and continuous self-modification. Authority was presumed for male colleagues and conditional — forever provisional — for themselves.
03
Individual Grit Over Structural Reform
Even when structural constraints were acknowledged (eight participants named them explicitly), the proposed solutions were overwhelmingly personal: more determination, more confidence, more self-advocacy. Only two participants identified organizational leadership as the primary locus of responsibility.
04
Solidarity as a Substitute for Accountability
Collective responsibility for change was directed horizontally — women supporting and mentoring other women — rather than vertically toward the institutions and power structures that created the inequity. Change was envisioned as something women do for each other, not something organizations owe their employees.
What This Means for Work
The implications of this research extend well beyond individual psychology. When women internalize responsibility for systemic problems, institutions are effectively insulated from accountability. Leadership programs that focus on building women's confidence or teaching them to navigate bias — without simultaneously requiring organizations to examine their own structures — may be doing more to preserve existing hierarchies than to dismantle them.
Szilak argues that until responsibility is redirected from individual women to the institutional structures that sustain inequity, the gender leadership gap will remain a self-perpetuating paradox. The burden of closing the gap continues to fall on those least empowered to do so.
For leaders and HR professionals, the study poses an uncomfortable but essential question: Are your organization's diversity initiatives focused on changing women, or on changing the organization?
Until responsibility is redirected from individual women to institutional structures, gender inequity will continue to operate as a self-perpetuating paradox.
Looking Ahead to create a new world
The study acknowledges its limitations — a small sample recruited through social media, virtual interviews that may affect depth of disclosure, and a broad demographic scope that makes it difficult to examine how race, class, and disability intersect with gendered responsibility. Szilak calls for future longitudinal research examining how these internalized beliefs evolve across a career, and for intersectional analyses that consider how inherited culpability lands differently for women from marginalized communities.
What the research does make clear is that the problem of women's underrepresentation in leadership is not — and has never been — a problem of women's ambition, confidence, or effort.
It is a problem of institutional design, cultural narrative, and the deeply human tendency to internalize the expectations of the systems we inhabit. Recognizing that is the first, uncomfortable step toward something better.
Original study: Szilak, K.J. (2026). "Cause and Cure: Women's Perceptions of Responsibility in Gendered Leadership Inequity." Open Journal of Leadership, 15, 193–210. Read the full paper →
