Login
The Great Break-up and its significance for emerging women lawyers
With the Great Break-up gaining traction in the professional world, Anna Lozynski sheds light on the complexities and motivations behind the movement, which has seen an unprecedented number of women professionals leave their roles to prioritise their wellbeing.
Grace Robbie
Speaking on a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, Anna Lozynski, freelance general counsel and legal innovation consultant, explored the complexities and motivating factors behind the Great Break-up movement. She also discussed how this movement highlights a transformative shift in how women redefine their careers to prioritise work environments that offer the support and flexibility needed to balance their personal and professional lives.
Lozynski revealed that she first became aware of this phenomenon during a discussion at her book club, where they examined Sophie Williams’ insightful book, The Glass Cliff.
“I actually first read about this phenomenon during book club [with a book] called The Glass Cliff by Sophie Williams. I highly recommend it for anyone to read, whether you’re male or female or identify as any other gender,” she said.
She summarised that “the Great Break-up is basically a movement where women specifically are deciding to break up with their workplaces, [due to] a couple of things”.
Lozynski articulated that a fundamental focus of the Great Break-up movement is the desire for women to prioritise their wellbeing. This is particularly crucial for working mothers, who often bear significant mental loads and tend to prioritise the needs of others while neglecting their own.
“One [is] wellbeing, because if anyone’s a working mum, you know that the juggle is real, the mental load is immense. There can be some anxiety, particularly as a first-time mum, when you’re stepping through phases and moments.
“And us good old mums tend to put ourselves last when it comes to self-care in those moments when really we need more support, more self-care,” she said.
Referring to recent research, Lozynski also highlighted the disparity between pathways leading to leadership roles for women and those of their male counterparts as a key factor motivating women to pivot their careers away from their professional environment.
“The other thing is that there’s also research around women in leadership and how perhaps the path of women in leadership is different to the trajectory that men, and, I’ll say, enjoy because of the biases that are held and prevalent in most workplaces,” she said.
“The other important part of the research is that women are often in organisations tasked with ancillary responsibilities, which men aren’t usually tapped on the shoulder. For example, driving diversity initiatives, very much being made responsible for making the rest of the women in the organisation feel like they’re inspired.”
Lozynski also explained that the Great Break-up movement signifies a broader evolution in workplace culture, emphasising an increasing demand for employee flexibility.
“If you take a macro look at what’s going on, there is an evolution of flexibility. But there is also an evolution [in] women coming back to the workplace after having children,” she said.
She supported this movement by citing research that emphasised her observations. It highlighted that while the number of women in full-time roles has only marginally increased, the demand for flexible work arrangements has surged dramatically.
“But what’s really interesting, also speaking of evolution, is there’s a recent study that was conducted by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and BankWest Curtin Economic Centre, and they crunched data from over 5,000 organisations employing about five million Australians,” she said.
“The trend that has come out from there is that the share of women in full-time jobs has gone up, but only by a couple of per cent. But the massive jump for all genders is that full-time roles are offering flexible arrangements, and that has gone from 2 per cent up to 42 per cent.”
Within workplaces striving to meet the evolving needs of women balancing careers and parenting, Lozynski highlights a significant gap in understanding how flexible work policies are implemented in real-life scenarios for employees.
“As workplaces try to catch up with the evolution of women wanting to have careers alongside being parents, where I think there’s a gap is how that actually plays out logistically. And that’s what a lot of the women in my community or that reach out to me privately in my direct messages, that’s what they grapple with,” she said.
“We’re in this really messy area where women want to come back into the workforce [but] our societal structures aren’t necessarily set up to necessarily facilitate that.”
