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013 | We Don't Have an Ambition Gap. We Have a Wellbeing Gap. · Spacious Success

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Hi, it's Dr. Christy Goodwin. Welcome back to the Spacious Success Podcast. I want
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to start today with something that I've been thinking about quite a lot lately. It's
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something that keeps showing up in coaching sessions, in keynote Q&As, and sometimes
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even in coffees with friends. I see smart, successful, high-achieving women who
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are saying it half jokingly but half-longingly, maybe I'll just become a
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tradwife. And we laugh, because obviously we're not going to give up our
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independence. We've built careers, we've led teams, we've made our own money
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often since we were teenagers. But behind that joke, I think there's something
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else. And I want to spend today's episode unpacking what that something else
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might actually be. Because I think it tells us everything about what the real
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problem is. And it's not an ambition problem as we've been told. Hi, I'm Dr.
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Christy Goodwin, a neuroperformance scientist, speaker and executive coach who
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learned the hard way that chasing success can come at a cost. After burnout
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landed me in hospital, I made it my mission to help ambitious women who are
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done trading their health and happiness for high performance. On spacious
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success, I share science-backed strategies and real stories to help you flourish
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as a female at work and beyond so you can stop paying the success tax.
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A couple of years ago, I was speaking at a leadership event. It was a conference
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and one of their senior executives approached me after my presentation. She had
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been in the same organization for 14 years. She steadily climbed the corporate
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ladder. She was widely regarded as one of the sharpest, most strategic
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minds in that building. And she said to me, I just turned down a promotion. She
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wasn't distressed about it. She was quite a matter of fact. And she said, 12
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months ago, I would have said yes without any hesitation. But I looked at the
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people in those roles above me. I look closely at the female ones especially.
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And I thought, is this the life that I want? Is that what the next decade of my
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life looks like? And I genuinely couldn't say yes. She was not burned out in the
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traditional sense. She was performing well. She could not reconcile what she was
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being asked to become with how she wanted to live. Thankfully, she knew what this
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version of success in her life look like. What does success in this season look
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like? And she knew that taking the promotion wouldn't allow her to live in
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close proximity to her values. Her organization lofts the high performer. This
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woman was labelled as lacking ambition. And nothing in the system changed
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because the system told itself a story that it protected itself from
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accountability. And this is what is often being referred to as an ambition gap.
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But that's not what it really is. Instead, I think it's a well-being gap in
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disguise. We've been told that women are leaning out and deliberately choosing
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not to lean in because what they really want to do, I believe, is often just
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lay down. And it is playing out in offices and organisations everywhere, in
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Australia, internationally, not loudly, not dramatically, but consistently and
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cumulatively.
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Today, in this episode, I want to spend a moment and I want to double-click on this
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tradwife conversation in an interesting way because I think it is doing
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important diagnostic work and we need to listen to what it is really telling
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us. To be absolutely clear, this is not a critique at all of any woman who chooses
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not to work or to have the option and the desire to structure her life and her
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family's life differently. That is a deeply personal, legitimate choice. And I'm
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not here to adjudicate how anyone organises their life. What I am interested
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in is why this fantasy is resonating with so many women who have no intention of
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actually acting on it. Why would women who have postgraduate degrees suddenly
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want to swap this for a floral apron so that they can need sourdough for hours
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on end? Why is it an appealing alternative for women? And when something resonates
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that broadly, is it worth us pausing and asking what is this conversation pointing
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at? Because I don't think it's about apron strings on the stagia. I don't
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think it's about the role and I certainly don't think it's about wanting to
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give up our independence. I think what we're craving as women is relief. A
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slower morning, no rushing, time to rest, time to breathe, a life where you are
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not simultaneously managing a demanding career, running a household, carrying
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the emotional load for your team and your family, tracking appointments,
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volunteering at school, organising the birthday gift for your colleague that
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you've never met and doing it all with great hair, taking your 120 grams of
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protein each day and hitting your creatine target at the same point and with a
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smile plastered on your face. High achieving women did not just break into the
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boardroom, we brought the unpaid domestic and caring labour with us and now
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we're often carrying a digital load too. I see women too often carrying loads
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that no one pays for and that no one sees but everyone relies on. We carry the
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cognitive and emotional labour and the numbers make the invisible visible. On
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average in Australia we know women perform 32 hours per week in unpaid domestic
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and care work that is more than men, nine hours more than men in the same week.
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This is Australian research that tells us despite rising female workforce
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participation, women still form the majority of unpaid domestic labour worldwide
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and this is not just about who does the cooking of the laundry. Research
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consistently tells us that women disproportionately carry the routine, the
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relentless time-intensive work, the cleaning, the meals, the mental tracking of
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every moving part of households. Women's women, sorry, frequently do more of
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this work even when they out earn their partners. We've broken into the board
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room but we didn't leave the second shift behind us. We are now running both
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often with a digital third shift layered on top so the trad wife fantasy hits a
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nerve because it dares to imagine a life that we have been told that we cannot
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have. A life where success does not require constant self-sacrifice where we are
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not expected to play both roles endlessly and seamlessly without any cost. We
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don't want to go back nor do we want to lean out as women but we do want a new
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model. We want better systems and structures. One where we value sustainability
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over sacrifice. One that does not reward burnout or penalize us for holding
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boundaries. One that makes room for what I call spacious success. Success with
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space with your health intact where you can be present and here is the thing.
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The data is actually telling us the same story. The trad wife fantasy is not just a
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fringe sentiment it is a symptom of something I believe is so much more
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measurable. Let me walk you through what the research is actually showing us
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because the numbers are significant and they are not I believe being
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discussed loudly enough. Mackenzie and co and leanin.org commissioned some
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research in 2025 called the Women in Workplace report and they found that
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1610 senior level women report feeling frequently burned out compared to
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around 50% of men in similar roles but here's the finding that stops me every
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single time. Women are now less interested in being promoted than men. Not
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because ambition has disappeared the researchers clear that women are just as
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committed to their careers but fewer are aspiring to senior roles because the
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cost of progression has become too high. Women are not disengaging they are
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exhausted. They are stretched because they're stressed. They are tired because
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they're taxed. They are watching the exhausted and depleted women who have paved
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the path before them and they're questioning if that's what they want to
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aspire to achieve. The juggle struggle numbers make everyday reality visible.
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79% of women report yearning for a slower pace of life. Hence why the
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tradwife lifestyle may be appealing. 70% of women say juggling work and
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personal commitments is taking a serious toll on them. 64% admit to drowning in
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household and a lifestyle administration. These aren't soft statistics. They are
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women saying that I am carrying too much and there's no end in sight. Before I
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share the hardest statistics let me acknowledge something that's really
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important. Interestingly women's participation in the Australian workforce
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actually reached a record high. Nearly 64% of a rate in 2025 and that's worth
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celebrating. Women are showing up. We are committed. The pipeline is an empty but
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participation is not the same as thriving and that distinction matters
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enormously. In 2025's Forbes reported that 450,000 women exited the US
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workforce alone and when asked why the most common denominator was key giving
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responsibilities and the high cost of childcare, not a lack of ambition,
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structural incompatibility. When the system refuses to adapt so that women do
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not act opt out of work they opt out of unsustainable workplace design. And for
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women who stay the question we're not asking loudly enough is it what cost?
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Because the G LWS gender wellbeing gap 2025 report tells us a
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confronting story about what's happening underneath these record
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participation numbers. A sustained year-on-year decline in women's well-being
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across work satisfaction, personal well-being, life satisfaction and overall
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happiness. Women are in the workforce in record numbers they are but they're
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not okay and the energy data within that report is confronting. Vitality and
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energy is the lowest scoring well-being dimension for women and the area in
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most pronounced decline since 2016. Despite reporting healthy lifestyle habits
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than men, 70% of women still feel exhausted at work, 74% are skipping essential
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breaks. Women are starting the day from a depleted state and I hear this
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conversation over coffees at the end of keynotes in the quiet conversations that
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happen after the room empties and I hear it in the executive coaching
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sessions that I have with incredible women who are wondering what on earth am I
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doing wrong? What else could I do better? And I hear this when I catch up with
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friends. Women who are accomplished performing at a high level meeting every
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expectation and privately running on empty. Women who are fine on the outside but
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are totally fried on the inside. Participation rates don't capture that data
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this data does. Australian research tells us that 72% of women experience
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burnout in the last year according to women's agenda despite greater access to
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well-being initiatives. Those initiatives are functioning like a band-aid
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over a structural problem. The Delight Women at Work 2025 report found that
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36% of women said their stress levels were higher than the year before and
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only four in ten women can switch off from work at all. Here's the
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neuroscience behind all of this. Your prefrontal cortex is the seat of your
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executive function. It's the CEO of your brain. It's responsible for strategic
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thinking, decision-making and it's metaphorically expensive for your
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prefrontal cortex to run. It requires glucose, adequate sleep, recovery
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cycles. But when you are perpetually operating in a high-demand environment
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without those inputs, your cognitive quality will simply decline. This will
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show up as insomnia, decision fatigue, digestive issues, emotional
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blunting, impaired thinking. The brain fog, we often say, is attributed to
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perimenopause or menopause may be more likely connected to poor sleep and
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high stress as much as it is hormonal. It's not a character flaw, it's
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biological. And women in leadership carry a compounded version of this every
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day. Christine Maslash's work around burnout has been the most rigorously
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validated in the literature and it identifies exhaustion as the most
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predictive dimension of burnout. Women in demanding roles showing that the
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exhaustion is appearing at higher rates. Women who are simply carrying too
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much. We've seen a trend towards women micro-shifting and I find this
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trend fascinating. Research has identified, because of more flexible work
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arrangements, invisible strategic adjustments that women have been making
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quietly for years, often compressing their work into unconventional
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windows. Adjusting their hours around caregiving responsibility,
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recalibrating their energy. Women who work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. rush to pick
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up the kids or visit their aging parents and then log back into their work
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computer from 8 to 10 p.m. Women who've been adapting to make work work
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creatively, persistently, but often at a personal cost. The system has never
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had to bend or flex back. And here's the strategic implication for
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organizations. When the most capable, experienced females in your organization
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have calculated that the cost of continuing will exceed the benefit. It's not
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an individual performance issue. They don't need another resilience program.
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It is an organizational performance crisis happening in slow motion.
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We don't have an ambition gap. We have a gender well-being gap.
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We have to address this gender well-being gap that is at the root of this.
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It's costing organizations the talent that they cannot simply afford to lose.
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So what can we do with this? I'm going to share what I think are three
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starting points, whether you are navigating this for yourself personally,
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or perhaps you're leading an organization that really wants to close this gap.
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The first thing is to, I think, name the calculation.
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High performing women who are stepping back are not doing so impulsively.
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They are performing a complex cost-benefit analysis, usually in their heads
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in the shower, over months or even over years.
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The most powerful thing you can do is to make that calculation explicit and
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informed. Ask yourself, what am I actually paying?
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What's the true cost of this current model?
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And I can call this the success tax. It becomes visible when you write it down.
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And once you can see it clearly, you can start making intentional decisions
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about what you're actually willing to pay.
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The second thing is to audit what your human operating system, your HOS,
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actually needs. It has some non-negotiable biological demands, sleep,
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quality recovery, regulated stress, regulated nervous systems, genuine human
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connections. These aren't luxuries, they're operational requirements.
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And when those inputs are consistently compromised, your prefrontal cortex
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is running at reduced capacity.
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Your immune immunity is compromised.
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Your wellbeing suffers. Decisions are impaired.
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Your creativity declines. Your emotional regulation suffers.
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The question is not how to want less.
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The question is how to build success architecture that will include your
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biological blueprint so that you can sustain performance.
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This is exactly what I do with my coaching clients.
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The third one and this one is directed at organizations as much as individuals
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is to change what success looks like at the top.
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The McKinsey and co-data is unambiguous.
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When women receive the same level of career support as men,
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including sponsorship, real flexibility and cultures that respect recovery
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and rest, the ambition gap disappears.
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Because as I've said, ambition isn't declining.
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We want better conditions.
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Your women in senior roles are paying an unsustainable success tax.
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And this results in the women below them questioning whether that's what
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they want to emulate.
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Role modeling, sustainable high performance is not a soft HR initiative.
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It is the single most important retention strategy and signal that
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organizations can send.
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The wellbeing gap is closeable, but not with more leadership programs or
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unconscious bias training.
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It closes when that model of success at the top changes.
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When high performance and sustainable biology stop being treated as opposing
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forces, because women, we're not broken, the system is.
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This week's power up protocol, I want you to name your calculation.
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I want you to spend some time defining what success in this season of your life
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really looks like.
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Maybe you can journal, have a chat with a friend, make sure that you're
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climbing the right mountain because I work with many high performers who climbed
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to the top only to realize they've climbed the wrong mountain.
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Take some time then to reflect on what's the actual cost of your current success
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model, not the visible costs, spend some time to dig out what are the hidden
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costs, the sleep you're not getting, the recovery that you're not protecting,
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the walk or the gym session you keep skipping, the dinners with girlfriends
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that you keep canceling on, the presence that you are not bringing, the
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cognitive load that you are carrying without any acknowledgement.
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And when you can see the success tax in writing, you can start to decide what
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you're willing to pay, what's the price of success, my powered up
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women keynote takes this conversation directly into organizations with the
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data, the neuroscience, and the frameworks that leaders need to genuinely
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and actually close the gender wellbeing gap.
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If your team needs this conversation, inquire about me bringing this to your
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next event via via my website.
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I'm Dr. Christie Goodwin.
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Thank you for listening to this episode of Spacious Success.