I’d like to introduce you today to Sarah Clein and her blog post that outlines her experience of working with mid-career women in the public sector. This is one of our series on coaching in different industries. I hope you are enjoying the different lenses through which my guest bloggers are seeing the power of coaching.
The term “midlife women” generally refers to those aged 45-60, belonging to Generation X, and born between the mid to late 60s and the early 80s. They are the most educated, healthy and experienced generation of women that have ever lived. However, alongside the years of expertise and experience that they have gathered along the way, comes the “mid-load” – the pressure of building careers while also still bringing up the kids they may have had later in life and looking after parents who as they are getting older might start to need extra support. This life stage also coincides with menopause for many women, which can be challenging both psychologically and physically.
Midlife women working in the public sector, have all of the above pressures of managing the mid-load alongside the additional pressures of working in a sector that is typically under-resourced and high-pressure alongside increasing needs and expectations from the communities that it serves. This has been significantly exacerbated by the post-pandemic era of increasing need and demand for services, recruitment issues, cost of living crisis and the challenges of managing teams and leading organisations that are hybrid working.
The public sector is a large employer of women with the 2023 Women and the UK Economy report, highlighting that 77% of jobs in health and social care and 70% of jobs in education are held by women. This is most likely due to the large number of flexible working and part-time roles available that may be easier to combine with having a family. Interestingly, studies show women’s careers and alongside that, their pay, often stagnates in their late 30s, compared to men. This is a time when experience and skill lead to more senior roles but also, for many women, may coincide with the time that many women choose to start families.
Research carried out by the Fawcett Society in 2022, The Sex and Power Index, showed that 49% of councils were run by women and 22% were politically led by women. The women who reach those senior roles, many of them in midlife, have often had to fight their way through gender stereotypes and a lack of promotion opportunities compared to male colleagues to get to and keep those positions.
At home, many women report having to be the keeper of all the fragments, the finder of all the sports kit, the planner of all the events, and the thinker of all the things. As equal as home life and child care may be in some families, women often talk about being the emotional glue that holds everything together.
At work, a similar pattern continues for many women who take on a disproportionate amount of “office housework” – organising events, purchasing gifts, planning celebrations, and providing overall emotional caretaking for their workplace. While not promoted or even recognised for this work, it takes precious time and ever more precious energy to keep the organisational wheels greased.
After years of giving their all, thinking of all the home and family things, sometimes fighting their way up against bias, maybe lacking more senior female role models around them and lacking support, by midlife many women hit menopause and realise that they have less years ahead than have gone before. That question, that 3 a.m. wonder starts to creep in about IS THIS IT? Should I stay, should I go (I’m sure there’s a song about that) or is it time to start that thing, business, hobby, plan, that I’ve been pondering on for a while now, waiting for the perfect time? It’s no wonder that public sector organisations are increasingly reporting the brain drain or burnout of their midlife female staff.
Causes of burnout
Several interconnected factors drive burnout among midlife women in the public sector workforce:
- Persistent gender gaps in pay and promotions. The most recent data from the Office for National Statistics published in 2021/2 showed that the public sector gender pay gap was 15.5%. The reality is that comparable roles often pay women less. Male-dominated leadership or recruitment processes where senior leaders recruit people similar to them can sometimes make advancement difficult for women.
- Pressure to take on “office housework” and emotional labour like planning events, nurturing workplace culture, and covering for others. This work often goes unseen and underappreciated.
- Lack of organisational support on issues like menopause, fertility struggles and the additional needs that may exist for people who care for families or relatives. Taboos persist in some organisations around discussing these topics.
- Toxic workplace power dynamics and politics that reward aggression and sharp elbows over collaboration and integrity.
- Intensifying workload and expectations without increased resources and support. The constant pressure to deliver and do more with less feeling unsustainable in the long run.
Consequences of burnout
When midlife women leave due to burnout, organisations lose dedicated employees along with valuable institutional knowledge and memory. With less mentorship and leadership, organisational culture and morale can also decline and there are simply fewer midlife women around to lead the way and act as role models for younger women in the organisation to help them see, feel, hear and experience what a healthy, professional midlife looks like.
How does coaching help?
Coaching can make a big difference for midlife women working in the public sector in the following ways:
- Building confidence and assertiveness – helping women find their voice, be more self-assured and advocate for themselves at work. This enables them to advance and contribute more fully.
- Navigating career changes – enabling women to assess options, plan skills development and make career shifts inside or outside of public service. This supports career growth.
- Managing work-life balance – assisting women in setting boundaries, reducing overwhelm and finding greater harmony between personal and professional life. This relieves stress.
- Overcoming workplace challenges – helping women tackle issues like discrimination, lack of flexibility, exclusion from networks, etc. This creates a more equitable workplace.
- Supporting health and wellbeing – helping women implement lifestyle changes to improve physical and mental health. This boosts resilience.
- Planning retirement transitions – helping women reimagine purpose in the next phase of life, identify new goals and sources of fulfilment and transition smoothly to retirement.
- Developing leadership skills – building critical skills like strategic thinking, influencing, decision-making, conflict management and team leadership. This can help women planning for senior roles.
- Finding meaning and engagement at work – enabling women to connect work to values, leverage strengths, and increase engagement and satisfaction at work.
I’m Sarah Clein from Wildflower Fire, and I work with knackered public sector female leaders to help them avoid burnout and find their midlife mojo(y); you can find me at
https://linktr.ee/sarahclein
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahcleinconsultingltd/
Thank you Sarah for contributing to this body of work on coaching across industries. We are seeing the patterns of societal and systemic pressures across them all, and how coaching can support and challenge individuals in those arenas.
Further reading/citations
https://hbr.org/2023/06/women-in-leadership-face-ageism-at-every-age
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01250/
http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/research/2019/10/31/why-do-women-favour-working-in-the-public-sector/
https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1790007/closing-gender-pay-gap-public-sector
https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/sex-power-2022
The Silent Revolution – why midlife women are walking out at the peak of their careers
