NI’s Suffragents, Please Stand Up

Tuesday 15 September 2026

By Roseann Kelly, CEO of The WiB Group, feature in The Irish News.

When it comes to women in the workplace, we’ve been lulled into thinking gender progress is linear.

The reality, it seems, is alarmingly different. To the extent that our female leadership pipeline is beginning to buckle under the compounding weight of childcare pressures, unchecked burnout and incessant inequality.

Rather than year-on-year improvement, any progress made is starting to stall or, worse, slip into reverse. The PwC Women in Work Index laid this bare: in 2025, the UK fell to 18th place for female workforce equality, marking the sharpest post-pandemic decline among all OECD nations.

More than a century since the Suffragettes fought to give women a voice, today’s generation face wrangling with a model of work ill-equipped for women. The structure is outdated, and if a workplace isn’t built to accommodate and indeed support women throughout their careers, then that same workplace is not built for the future.

Which, again, underlines why women are opting for part-time. Opting out of the promotion. Or leaving the workforce altogether, with long-term consequences for C-suite representation. For too many women, the pathway to leadership is the ladder with a broken rung. Or three.

Women are working just to pay for childcare, all the while juggling a disproportionate amount of life admin and caring commitments. Just look at NI’s estimated bill for unpaid care (£4.6 billion) the majority of which is delivered by – you guessed it – women.

Is it really OK to ask these women, under pressure and underrepresented, to keep going and be the modern-day Suffragette we so desperately need? To do the hard graft of today, making sacrifices for future generations. Should we ask them to suck up the guilt they carry over their children? To not have children? To simply juggle harder? To ‘make things work’ for the big promotion.

Could these be the icons who ultimately inspire women at the table in 30 years’ time? Will these leaders in waiting get the recognition they deserve?

If the pipeline continues as it is today, I do not want to contemplate the future. That the number of women CEO among NI’s Top 100 companies still languishes in single figures speaks volumes about our sorry state of gender representation.

The ask of women is too much. Yet if our male colleagues openly supported us and became ‘Suffragents’ in their own right, we could maybe plug the leak – reinforcing that all-important pipeline both now and into the future.

I truly believe in diversity and its power to find the best solutions. My ask of the male CEOs in the Top 100 is to be inclusive leaders today for the benefit of society, the world and the planet. A world without diversity of leadership – without female leaders – is a world unfulfilled.

At The WiB Group, our door is always open to senior leaders – male and female – wanting to advance gender parity and ensure more women stay in our workforce. Let’s have a conversation: roseann@thewibgroup.com.

Tuesday 15 September 2026