Performative to Proactive: The Next Generation of Workplace Advocacy

Performative allyship is a relic of the past. It's time for a radical redefinition of what it truly means to stand in solidarity.

Organizations must move beyond nominal, incomplete methods of support and champion the concept of —and the phrase — active advocacy instead. Standing with women workers requires a commitment to addressing the inequities women confront in the workplace.

“Advocacy means fixing systems, not putting the burden on women to lean in,” said Christie Smith, founder of The Humanity Studio, former vice president of diversity and inclusion at Apple, and author of Essential (Wiley, 2025). 

As workplace challenges for women continue to evolve, so must the ways their leaders and peers advocate for them. Without this shift — and an acknowledgment of the barriers women face that have yet to be dismantled — efforts become demonstrative, at best.

“Performative allyship is all optics and no substance — it’s the corporate equivalent of posting a hashtag and calling it progress,” Smith said. “It fails because it dodges the real, challenging, and sometimes uncomfortable work of acknowledging and tackling systemic barriers women face.”

Women occupied only about 20% of the U.S. workforce in the 1920s, according to the U.S Department of Labor. Now, 100 years later, they account for nearly half of it and have surpassed pre-pandemic employment numbers by 2 million, per the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

As the U.S. workforce moves beyond these significant milestones, it’s clear that a new model of advocacy is necessary to make further strides for women in the workplace.

Member Resource: How to Build Effective, Legally-Compliant Inclusion and Diversity Programs

Next-Gen Active Advocacy

For much of history, systemic barriers and biases, often upheld by those in positions of power, have limited women’s opportunities and marginalized their contributions in the workplace. However, some men have played a role in boosting women’s participation in the U.S. workforce and improving access to education, including:

• U.S. reformer Samuel Joesph May is recognized for championing education for young Black girls in the early 1800s as well as advocating for women’s suffrage.

• In 1963, then-President John F. Kennedy helped advance gender pay equality by signing the Equal Pay Act, which prohibits wage differences based on sex.

• Then-President Jimmy Carter contributed to anti-discrimination efforts in 1978 by signing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which prevents employment discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy or childbirth.

Despite these efforts — and others, from both men and women — women’s progress continues to be hindered by underrepresentation in leadership, pay gaps, and experiences related to other demographic factors such as race.

Meaningful, results-oriented advocacy for women workers begins with curiosity and is then carried out with accountability, according to Tamla Oates-Forney, CEO of SHRM Linkage.

A strong advocate actively searches for instances of gender disparity in their workplace, such as a lack of diversity among leadership, she said, and asks themselves why these problems exist.

“Be curious as to what is going on in your organization,” Oates-Forney said. “If there is a gender imbalance, seek to understand why. Once you understand why, ask yourself whether that ‘why’ is within your control or not.”

Oates-Forney developed a new framework centered on curiosity, interest, accountability, and action (CIAA) that emphasizes action and encapsulates the steps necessary for effective advocacy.

• Curiosity: Search for instances of gender inequity in your organization and seek to understand why they exist.

• Interest: Learn about the impact of these barriers on women workers.

• Accountability: Identify contributors to gender equity barriers that are within your control.

• Action: Use your influence to develop and carry out strategies to respond to these issues.

“When one feels a sense of accountability and ownership over their advocacy, real change happens,” Oates-Forney said. “It’s not enough to just be interested or supportive.”

The Impact of Intersectionality

The daily lives and challenges experienced by women are not monolithic. The overlap of demographic groups leads to unique perspectives and barriers.

This overlap is known as intersectionality, and it represents a frequently overlooked aspect of present-day advocacy. Women of color experience womanhood differently than their white peers, and women with disabilities have different experiences than women without disabilities. One tell of performative allyship is the omission of intersectionality, which results in disproportionately high benefits for some women while others receive next to nothing.

Real-world examples include: 

• In 2024, the number of white women C-suite executives was more than triple the number of women of color in those positions, according to research from McKinsey & Company.

• The Center for American Progress noted that, in 2023, the gender pay gap was nearly 20% higher for Black women, who earned 66 cents for every dollar earned by men, compared to white women’s 83 cents.

“Allyship that ignores intersectionality is incomplete,” Smith said. “Women’s experiences aren’t one-size-fits-all — nobody’s are. They’re shaped by race, sexuality, socioeconomic background, and access to education and opportunities.”

CIAA-minded advocates should be an active part of building inclusive cultures that uplift and advocate for all women, regardless of their demographics. This includes attitudinal shifts such as respecting the experiences of others, in addition to more active decisions that will expose you to people from different walks of life.

“The best allies listen deeply, learn about other people’s experiences, and act — creating cultures where all women are seen, heard, and celebrated for who they are and what they uniquely contribute,” Smith added. “Equity is about championing every voice at the table.”

Bridging Leadership Gaps

Women constitute a significant share of the overall U.S. workforce and now have more formal education than men. As of 2024, nearly half of women between the ages of 25 and 34 (47%) have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 37% of men in the same age range, per the Pew Research Center. Women also outpace men in holding master’s and doctoral degrees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Despite this, the number of women in C-suite positions decreased for the first time in two decades between 2022 and 2023 from 12.2% to 11.8%, according to the S&P Total Market Index.

“Women make up [nearly] half of the workforce,” Oates-Forney said. “The fact they don’t make up half of leadership tells you there is an imbalance. Men have benefited from that imbalance for a long time, and they are still in the position of power.”

Male hiring managers’ biases frequently block more women from ascending to leadership roles, according to Oates-Forney. These biases are often unconscious, but noticing and mitigating them is key to being a CIAA-minded advocate for the contemporary woman.

Member Resource: Understanding Implicit Bias in the Workplace

Before promoting — or even hiring — women, managers sometimes subconsciously look for them to have more employment experience to avoid accusations of affirmative action or tokenization, highlighting a clear example of gender-based hiring bias.

“They’re trying to show that they’re doing the right thing and hiring the right candidate, and sometimes they might look for even more [qualifications] just to make sure that narrative doesn’t take hold,” Oates-Forney explained.

This phenomenon may result in an environment in which men are promoted based on their potential while women are promoted based on performance, Smith added.

The Role of Technology in Active Advocacy

Being an active advocate for women involves recognizing and suppressing these biases. It can start by leveraging emerging tech tools.

“Technology, specifically AI, presents an opportunity to help us level the equity field in human capital systems among all people in an organization,” said Rustin Tonn, board director of inclusion and diversity at the SHRM Colorado State Council. “Properly calibrated AI has the potential to remove bias and pay disparity.”

In the early stages of the hiring process, recruiters should evaluate a candidate’s merit by determining how relevant their resume is to the job description. Artificial intelligence can efficiently identify which candidates are most qualified based on their resumes, with potential identifying information including, but not limited to, the candidate’s name and sex/gender expression or age implications. This eliminates the chance of a candidate being disqualified during the screening process due to unconscious bias.

Using AI effectively is all about starting with a clear and specific prompt. Try out this sample AI command for determining the merit and skills of a job candidate: “Conduct a qualification analysis of the attached resume based on the competencies required in the attached job description. In this context, a qualification analysis encompasses [insert your criteria here].”

“There’s no telling if the candidate is male or female, since the analysis request is based on the candidate’s competencies and examples listed on their resume against the actual job description,” said Sharmin Islam, manager of talent acquisition at SHRM.

If this prompt doesn’t give you the results you need, continue to refine it until you’ve landed on one that comes back with what you need and can be used regularly.

The Integration of Work and Life

Competing obligations also hinder women’s leadership representation in the workplace. Women with enough work experience to take on high-level roles may be held back by additional caregiving expectations, often related to culture-specific gender norms.

Generation X and Millennials — those born between 1965 and 1996, generally speaking — “are part of the ‘sandwich generation,’ ” Oates-Forney explained. “They are taking care of their children and their parents. I’m not saying men aren’t doing this, but the burden typically falls on the female.”

Creating a flexible workplace is paramount in accommodating caregiving responsibilities, as well as living out the CIAA model. Open-leave policies and hybrid or remote work options allow employees more time for their personal obligations, and advocates should consider how these work formats could grant more women workers additional opportunities to advance their careers.

Advocates in decision-making roles can accommodate women and reduce barriers to high-level roles by offering more inclusive leave policies for all parents, regardless of gender. Men spending more time as caregivers or taking paternity leave not only reduces the burden for women, but it can also reduce the penalties, both perceived and real, for women doing the same.

Member Resource: Managing Flexible Work Arrangements

“We are seeking flexibility,” Oates-Forney said. “There are so many facets to our lives that we cannot neglect or ignore. We need an employer that understands our life challenges that are uniquely ours; a work environment understanding of and sensitive to these things makes it easier for women to integrate their lives into how they work and doesn’t require them to have to choose between their lives and their careers.”

Creating Space for Women's Growth

Active advocates play a role in reversing the effects of longtime gender-based barriers — and performative allyship — by prioritizing truly inclusive workplace cultures that interest, engage, promote, and retain women workers. They can begin by seeking to learn from their own colleagues.

If you have women on your team, talk to them and ask, ‘What is it like to work here? What can I do to make your experience better?’” Oates-Forney said. “Engage in human-to-human dialogue about what you can do to create an environment that would attract women, retain women, and develop women.”