I wanted to share a problem with you that I see escalating and one you might connect with as a successful woman!

More Women are reaching successful positions, yet more are also leaving.

And I was one of them, I spent 11 years in the Legal Profession as a criminal defence lawyer and whilst partnership had initially been my ultimate career goal, during the last two years in the profession I found myself utterly “soul destroyed”.

At the time, I didn’t appreciate the real meaning or power of the words I was using–partly because I was so depleted by being constantly surrounded by the “egos and agendas” of others as well as myself. I’d become part of a system that I didn’t like and felt I couldn’t change.

And I’m clearly not alone in that feeling, as whilst Female CEO’s of the Fortune 500 companies had risen in 2017, this year they dropped again to a meagre 4.8%.

And in the UK as well as the US, women in the Legal Profession match men but only 9% are equity partners and an investigation was launched in 2017 as to why so many women are leaving before reaching the “top”.

And we’ve seen the rising of women as a collective in that maybe we didn’t have as much equality as we once thought and we want more….or is there something we’re missing? Is that now the wrong argument?!

Because around all of this is the wider system and structures we’ve seen developed in the last 5,000 years of patriarchy — no longer being trusted like they once were and many of our core foundations being questioned.

Political Structures both here and in the US have been challenged including democracy itself with the Trump election and Brexit here in the UK. The Education system is training young people to a degree stand with no guarantee of a job or them being qualified to undertake it. School is training children for a workforce belonging to an industrial time that no longer exists and is also suffocating children’s natural creativity. The Criminal Justice System is verging on collapse, prisons have never worked, marriages struggle to survive, banks have nearly collapsed and no-one trusts advertising, much news or media.

A broken system which isn’t new but reaching a critical state across a vast range of systems and structures we need to work and function or do we?

Investigations conclude that successful women leave positions — because we need equal pay, flexible working and are facing sexual harassment and bullying – and whilst those issues certainly exist — it’s not why I left.

They say as women we lack in confidence and have imposter syndrome –  yet that wasn’t why I left either.

I left because I’d become part of a system I didn’t like and couldn’t see how to change. I left because I’d followed a roadmap to success which no longer fitted for me and I didn’t know how to create a new one. I left because I felt institionised by a system that I now felt trapped by.

I left because I’d lost connection to my feminine self and had been leading from my masculine and the reality is — most successful women do this. But we can only do it for so long……

Maybe that resonates with you as well?