I've achieved all this while flying nearly every 'red flag' that people say is antithetical to a successful academic career. I am a woman, am young-ish for an academic, have three children (now aged 9, 12 and 14), have moved internationally for my education and career, have worked in industry and now work in interdisciplinary research.
It's going to create a two-tier situation where the admin staff have the ability and the right to work from home but the blue-collar workers will have to come in. That will create a divide and would add another layer to our business, making it harder to get things done.
Women are hitting the top of the corporate ladder only to find something waiting for them: exhaustion. According to a report published Tuesday by McKinsey and LeanIn.org, a nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg, burnout among senior-level women is the highest it has been in the past five years. Around 60% of these women said they have frequently felt burned out at work in the past few months, compared with 50% of senior-level men, per numbers from the "Women in the Workplace" 2025 study.
Menopause often coincides with a critical phase in a woman's career, when experience, insight, and leadership potential are at their highest. But symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, hot flashes, and mood swings can disrupt work and energy levels. The issue isn't the symptoms, it's the silence surrounding them. Women are expected to "power through." Some do, but for many it turns into what is known as the midcareer cliff.
Sponsorship, or the act of using your own social capital to advocate for a junior employee, is often touted as a fix for inequities and key for fostering the talent pipeline. While it's true that most protégés generally benefit from receiving sponsorship, this relationship doesn't have to be only about the protégé. It can also present an opportunity for the sponsor to grow, allowing them to deepen and expand their own relationships with peers and senior leaders as they help connect a junior employee.
For this data cycle, MMF expanded the reach of the survey as well as the questions. When looking at workplace culture, for example, respondents were asked about the impact of their job on their health. Altogether, 3,100 staff members representing 91 institutions answered the survey, up from the 1,933 staff members at just over 50 museums who took part in the previous report in 2023.
