How Women can Connect with Leadership Coaching
CNN recently reported that more than 450,000 women have dropped out of corporate since January. Women (now more than ever) are switching for flexibility and independence.
MissPoppins explores this deeper on The Motherhood Gap: Why one in three women turn to solopreneurship/contract work.
We have seen it firsthand with our growth as a platform that houses a plethora of women (or general professionals) who have pivoted into care/childcare/service-providing work. For us this means virtual doulas, lactation consultants, speech pathologists, mental health guides, grief counselors, career coaches, parent coaches, neurodiversity specialists, fertility experts, and more.
HR Managers are Noticing the Motherhood Gap
Amy Pierre Russo (a life and career coach at MissPoppins) grounds her perspective in what she witnessed firsthand over many years. “With my background in HR, I definitely saw over years and years women leaving on maternity leave, women leaving for other reasons as well, caring for their own parents, caring for extended family members and returning,” she says. Even when women returned to work, the outcomes were not equal. “It did seem like even if you’re the best planner in the world, you can’t figure out what exactly it’s going to look like with a new addition to your family or the kinds of things that women navigate.”
She explains that this uncertainty often translated into stalled careers. “I did see oftentimes predominantly women experience a pay gap or experience their peers getting promoted over them, even though they were more than capable of the work that they were doing, of pouring into things,” she says. The issue, she notes, is not competence but competing demands. “With so many competing demands, it feels challenging to always be able to progress and be as competitive in your work.”
Amy Pierre Russo also referenced the recent CNN report in our conversation and noted a potential disproportionate rate of being pushed out of the work force,” she says. For her, this makes the imbalance impossible to ignore. “So it feels like, you know, we can’t say it’s not disproportionate these days.”
Critics on the current system can vary and career coaches such as Amy come together to focus on adapting to changes that come with it.
How the Burden Gets Shifted Onto Women
Amy Pierre Russo also points to a pattern where the responsibility for fixing workplace gaps is placed back on women themselves. “I think ultimately when women sometimes are needing some additional support or nurturing in their careers and mentorship and all kinds of things like this, it can sometimes be pushed back on the woman in the workplace,” she says. “To create an employee resource group or to lead the mentorship program or lead the internship, like whatever it is.”
The Little Things Go Unchecked
Amy Pierre Russo explains that when women do not have access to support, clarity, or guidance, inequities can persist unchecked. “If we don’t really get clarity and say, hey, this is what I’m doing, this is how I’m progressing, be able to advocate for ourselves and have these different conversations, things just kind of run away,” she says. “You don’t even realize it.”
She reflects on how different her own experience might have been with better support. “If I had the proper support back then and I understood what was out there to help me, it could have gone a lot, a lot differently for me,” she says. At the time, she was young and lacked resources. “When you don’t have enough corporate experience or just general work experience, dealing with these situations for the first time can be very overwhelming or you just may not know how to navigate it.”
Coaching Covers Your Life Blind Spots
Amy Pierre Russo makes it clear that these dynamics do not disappear as women advance. “At any point along your career,” she says, “if there’s not someone already carving the path or going in the trajectory you want to go in, it can feel like you have to figure out everything on your own.”
This is why she emphasizes access to community and coaching. “To be able to find your own community resources, access to information you need across levels is really supportive,” she says. “Coaching provides so much opportunity for bouncing ideas off of one another and seeing your blind spots.”
Learn to Alchemize Your Energy
Amy Pierre Russo’s perspective reframes the narrative around women and mothers leaving the workforce. The issue is not a lack of ambition, planning, or skill. It is the weight of systems that were not designed to account for caregiving, unpredictability, or the realities of women’s lives.
A self care coach will advise to never internalize systemic issues but to alchemize the energy into your own version of success. Success can look differently on everyone and we always suggest connecting with a professional to get the support you need.
Last Edited: December 14, 2025