Why Traditional Career Models Fail Women - and What Mid-Life Is Asking of Us Instead
In this article you will learn:
Why most career models were never designed for women’s lives
How paid work was layered on top of unpaid labour - without adjustment
Why ‘resilience’ narratives often gaslight women rather than support them
How identity and values shifts in mid-life expose structural cracks
Why many women turn to self-employment or career change in mid-life
How career counselling helps women navigate these realities honestly
Introduction: When the Model Breaks, Not the Woman
Many women reach mid-life believing they are the problem.
They tell me they are tired, overwhelmed, losing confidence, or ‘not coping the way they used to.’ They wonder why everyone else seems to manage - and why they can’t.
But what if the issue isn’t the woman at all, but the career model she’s been trying to live inside?
This article is for Gen X and older millennial women - especially those juggling paid work, unpaid labour, caring responsibilities, the emotional load for the entire household and their own changing health - who sense that the system itself is asking too much.
Not because they’re weak.
But because the system was never designed with their lives in mind.
Traditional Career Models Were Not Built for Women
Mainstream career models were built around a male life pattern: uninterrupted, linear, and supported by someone else doing the unpaid work.
These models assume:
continuous full-time availability, not mat leave, not sick kids, not other life ‘issues’ to attend to
predictable energy and health, not period problems, perimenopause, not the ebb and flow of womens hormones
minimal caregiving responsibility, not the phone call to pick up a sick kids or relatives, not putting food in the cupboard, not prepping dinner before you drop the kids off and go to work
a clear separation between ‘work’ and ‘life’, not the blurred lines of fitting work in around the edges of an already full schedule, and not being in a place where the only quiet moment you get to yourself in the toilet (literally)
For Gen X women, paid work was not integrated thoughtfully into life. It was piled on top of what our mothers already did - with little structural change to workplaces, expectations, or support systems.
Our mothers and grandmothers faced many of the same pressures we do. The difference is that most of them were not expected to perform at full capacity in paid work as well. The reality is that today’s woman in midlife is operating without a role model she can identify with. Peers perhaps, but for the most part she is making it up as she goes.
You cannot keep adding load without eventually crushing the person carrying it.
The Myth of Resilience - and Why It Keeps Women Stuck
The modern midlife women without role models, without a map to tell her where the next fuel station is in life so she can top up her tank is, and has always been, vulnerable to expectations set by those who don’t have to live with the outcome of them.
This is where women were sold the dream of ‘having it all’.
My question is: At what cost?
Women are often told they need to be:
more resilient
better at time management
stronger, tougher, more adaptable
Resilience has become a convenient way to individualise what are actually structural failures.
When women struggle under impossible demands, the narrative quietly shifts:
You’re not coping
You need better boundaries
You need to manage stress better
Rarely does the conversation turn to:
workload or workplace design
gendered expectations and bias
unpaid labour
health realities like periods or menopause
systemic pay inequity
Resilience rhetoric often gaslights women into blaming themselves for conditions they did not create.
I am angry as a Gen X woman that I brought the Kool -aid, and so many women I talk to and work with feel the same way, like they were set up to fail and put out to pasture once they needed something back in return for their hard work. Often this anger isn’t the empowered kind of rage that moves mountains, it is often tangled in grief, identity loss, imposter syndrome and feelings of shame.
Why Mid-Life Is When the Cracks Become Visible
Mid-life is often when the cost of this model can no longer be ignored.
For many women, this stage coincides with:
peak career responsibility, the title, corner office and pay packet reflect your brilliance
intensified caregiving (children and ageing parents), hello – sandwiches anyone?
hormonal and health changes, most of these are natural seasons and transitions for women that bring a lot of symptoms physically and emotionally, some even spiritually
relationship shifts, 40-50 is divorce alley for working women
a growing awareness of finite time and energy, because life really is too short for this sh*t
Mid-life doesn’t create the problem - it exposes it.
The strategies that worked when you were younger - pushing harder, being agreeable, absorbing pressure - stop working. Not because women are failing, but because their capacity is no longer being subsidised by youth, adrenaline, or silence.
Identity Loss Is a Rational Response to Structural Mismatch
Many women describe losing themselves somewhere along the way.
This is not because they lacked ambition or clarity.
It’s because they were required to fragment themselves - to be competent worker, primary carer, emotional manager, household administrator - without space to integrate those roles into one coherent identity. Or worse, if they did that identity is dependent on everything they do, instead of who they are.
When work demands ongoing self-suppression, identity erosion is not a personal flaw - it is a predictable outcome.
Mid-life often brings grief for:
who and where you thought you’d be
what you were promised that doesn’t match your reality
what your effort did not protect you from
That grief deserves recognition, not minimisation.
Too many women tell me stories about how they are paid less for doing a better job, or because they need flexibility. They have told me about sexual innuendo and veiled threats if they don’t tolerate it or worse. They tell me about the ongoing compromise they make to keep the peace or their job. Mostly they tell me about the dreams they once had that never panned out, not for lack of effort but because they are women trying to operate in a world of work built by and for men.
If you don’t believe me, check out the pay gaps for women in STEM. Governments are begging for more women in this industry, however, pay gaps for women in STEM remain among the largest in Australia - in some cases exceeding 30%
It isn’t fair, and it is not women’s fault. Yet sadly it becomes who they are in their careers, and it tells them they are worth less. Sit with that for 20- or 30 years and you cannot tell me self-identity and worth isn’t impacted.
Why So Many Women Turn to Self-Employment in Mid-Life
Many women I work with consider self-employment not because they want to hustle - but because they are seeking:
flexibility
autonomy
relief from gendered bias
control over workload and energy
escape from systems that no longer feel survivable
Self-employment is often a response to systemic inflexibility, not a desire for endless productivity.
It is also not the panacea it’s often sold as. Without careful reflection, women can recreate the same overload - just without sick leave or support.
Healing from this will likely make you angry if you aren’t already, because healing this kind of pain is existential, chaotic and will allow you to see just how much of your life has been built around dysfunction built into society.
This is why understanding capacity, values, and boundaries before making big shifts matters so much.
If this is you know you have options, this is one of many.
What Mid-Life Is Actually Asking of Women
Mid-life is not asking women to:
reinvent themselves
become more resilient
push through one more time
Mid-life is asking women to tell the truth about what no longer works - structurally, relationally, and personally.
It’s asking for:
integration rather than fragmentation
sustainability rather than sacrifice
work that fits life, not the other way around
This is not about finding the ‘perfect’ career. The time for that has long gone.
It’s about refusing to keep living inside a model that extracts more than it gives.
How Career Counselling Supports This Re-Orientation
Career counselling can provide a rare space where women are not treated as the problem to be fixed.
Instead, it helps women:
name structural and gendered realities
distinguish personal desire from inherited expectation
honour changing capacity and health
make sense of grief, anger, and disillusionment
design work that is liveable rather than idealized
mostly it supports women in deeply connecting with who they are and building their career and life around that
This work is not fast. It is honest.
And for many women, it is the first time their experience has been taken seriously rather than reframed as a mindset issue, or being told to stir some concrete in their coffee.
Working With a Career Counsellor Online in Australia
Online career counselling allows women across Australia to engage in this work without adding further strain to already full lives.
For women balancing work, care, and limited time, online sessions offer:
flexibility
privacy
continuity
space to think without interruption
This matters when you are already carrying too much.
A Final Word
If you feel tired of trying to make yourself fit a system that keeps asking for more - you are not broken.
You are responding rationally to an irrational set of demands.
Mid-life does not mean you’ve failed to cope.
It may mean you’ve reached the point where coping is no longer an acceptable goal or genuine option.
If you want support making sense of this stage - without being told to ‘fix yourself’ - a Soul Strategy Call can help you explore what might come next.