Why Great breakup Matters
When experienced women leaders leave, employers can lose knowledge, sponsorship capacity, succession depth, and credibility with earlier-career employees. Simply replacing departures without examining the conditions behind them can preserve the same pattern.
Terms Recruiters Commonly Compare
Great Resignation
The Great Resignation refers broadly to elevated voluntary quitting during the pandemic-era labour market. The Great Breakup focused specifically on women leaders switching employers at higher rates relative to men leaders in the cited study.
Employee turnover
Turnover is a measurable workforce flow over a defined period. The Great Breakup is an interpretive label for a particular reported pattern and needs the original population and context.
Recruitment Example
An employer notices that women directors are leaving after external promotions elsewhere. Interviews and workforce evidence point to slower internal progression, unrecognised inclusion work, and inflexible senior-role norms. The company audits promotion and pay, distributes people leadership fairly, redesigns flexibility, and gives recruiters verified role evidence rather than launching a campaign based only on the Great Breakup headline.
Implementation Playbook
- Check whether the cited finding applies to the country, time period, leadership level, and workforce being discussed.
- Analyse progression, pay, performance ratings, flexibility access, workload, sponsorship, exits, and regretted loss together.
- Investigate how experiences differ by race, disability, caregiving, age, sexuality, class, and other relevant factors without exposing small groups.
- Recognise and resource inclusion and people-management work instead of relying on women leaders to carry it informally.
- Give senior candidates concrete information about authority, success measures, support, flexibility, team health, and promotion practice.
- Track whether interventions improve experience and retention, not merely the number of external hires.
Common Mistakes
- Using the phrase as a synonym for all women resigning during the pandemic.
- Repeating a United States and Canada research finding as a current worldwide rate.
- Responding only with external hiring targets while leadership conditions remain unchanged.
- Treating women as one uniform group and overlooking the sharper barriers reported by some groups.
Metrics to Track
Questions Recruiters Ask
When did the Great Breakup happen?
The phrase was used in the 2022 Women in the Workplace report to interpret movement captured in that research period. Current conditions should be assessed with current, local evidence.
Does the Great Breakup mean women left the workforce?
Not primarily. The cited pattern concerned women leaders leaving their companies, often for another employer, rather than a single finding that women leaders had all stopped working.
How should an employer respond?
Examine advancement, pay, recognition, workload, flexibility, inclusion, authority, manager behaviour, and exit evidence; act on verified barriers; and hold leaders accountable for outcomes over time.
Sources and Review
ATZ CRM Recruitment Editorial Review · Reviewed 2026-08-05
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