Commentary: Rethinking resilience this International Women’s Day

About a decade ago, conversations about women’s issues surged into mainstream consciousness. The #MeToo movement went viral in 2017. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In had already sparked global debate. There was urgency, momentum and a clear rise in attention towards women in the workplace.

A decade on, in 2026, the mood feels different.

The issue is no less important, but the tone is more measured. In some places, there is fatigue. Beneath this shift is a quiet search for a way to address gender inequality that feels constructive rather than combative - one that energises rather than exhausts.

It is worth asking what the past decade has taught us.

If you want women in the room, you have to design for it

One clear gain has been a sharper focus on systems.

If you want women in the room, you have to design for it.

When I first moved to San Francisco in 2016 to build technology talent pipelines back to Singapore, I organised a Women’s Day event for Singaporean female engineers in the Bay Area. “Maybe five or ten will come,” a friend told me kindly.

Fifty women showed up.

Later, when we created the Singapore Tech Forum in the Bay Area, we were told that women would not attend. But we knew they were there. On an average weekend, if push came to shove, she would stay home with the child and he would attend the networking event.

So we created a childcare room. We livestreamed the programme and provided toys and snacks. A simple structural adjustment.

This time, nearly 120 women showed up - roughly a third of the audience.

The women were always there. The system simply had not made it easy for them to participate.

That has been an important lesson of the past decade: participation expands when systems are designed with real constraints in mind.

The cost of alienating our allies

At the same time, the increased attention on women’s empowerment has had unintended effects.

Living in California over the past decade, I observed a growing sensitivity around language in gender discussions. The original intention - that men should listen more closely to women’s experiences - was well-founded. But in some settings, participation began to feel risky. Public call-outs were common. 

In 2022, a friend joined a #HeForShe group at his company, eager to learn. He asked what he believed was a genuine question and was immediately criticised in the zoom chat.

He told me he had already felt vulnerable walking into the room. The experience made him more cautious, not more engaged. He did not return.

Over time, that tone contributed to disengagement. And his story is a thread that perhaps explains the broad cultural pushback, starting in the United States, against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). 

A question of capacity

Ten years on, perhaps it is time to build on what worked and move past what narrowed the conversation.

Recently, I revisited LeanIn.Org and McKinsey’s latest Women in the Workplace report. One finding stood out: women are less interested in promotion than men for the first time. The study found that men and women are equally motivated in their careers. However, corporate commitment to advancing women has softened in recent years. Researchers summarize the finding as such: “Without adequate support and balance, even the most motivated women can begin to question whether advancement is possible or worth the cost.”

I heard a similar logic in a different context. A CEO recently told me that AI adoption in his organisation had been weaker than expected, despite significant investment in enterprise tools. Then he paused and said quietly, “Learning requires energy. My people don’t have energy. I don’t have energy.”

We often personalise resilience. If they wanted it enough, they would upgrade themselves. If they were motivated enough, they would weather this season of life. If they understood the implications of AI, they would act now. 

But what if the issue is not motivation? What if it is capacity?

When stress outweighs a woman’s support

Stress itself is not the problem. Some stress stretches and sharpens us.

The problem arises when stress consistently outweighs the support available to meet it.

This pattern is visible in women’s lives, particularly in their thirties to fifties. Professional expectations intensify at the same time caregiving responsibilities expand - young children, ageing parents, sometimes both - within career systems that still reward uninterrupted, linear progression.

It is also visible among knowledge workers navigating AI-driven change. Many are expected to maintain existing output while learning new tools and restructuring parts of their role. That is not one job scope. It is several layered together.

When we see quiet quitting, job-hugging or women stepping off promotion tracks, the instinct is often to ask what is wrong with them.

Perhaps we should be asking something else.

When pressure increases - through restructuring, caregiving years or rapid technological change - who absorbs it?

When expectations rise, does support rise with it?

Companies need to ask this. Government does as well.

This could mean protecting time for AI upskilling instead of assuming it happens after hours. It could mean stronger psychological and workplace first-aid when teams undergo frequent restructurings. It could mean progression structures that allow for pauses without closing doors. 

A checkpoint on our current systems

International Women’s Day remains important because women continue to bear disproportionate pressures.

But if we are serious about progress, resilience cannot be treated as an individual trait - something to summon quietly in the face of rising demands.

It has to be built into the systems we rely on. If the strain keeps increasing and support does not, people will adjust. They will slow down, step sideways, or opt out of certain paths.

That adjustment is feedback - that resilience is not a matter of individual grit, but of system design.

International Women’s Day can be more than a celebration or a debate. It can be a checkpoint. Are the systems we are building strong enough to carry the ambitions and flexibility we are encouraging?

If resilience is a property of our systems, then it is something we can design, measure and strengthen -  so that progress does not depend solely on who can endure the most.

Karen Tay is Founder and CEO of Inherent, a global learning and consulting firm that works with leaders and institutions at moments of transition.