The Silent Crisis Behind Women's Rise: Why Modern Men Aren't Rising With Them
It started with a conversation where one man told me he felt women were climbing career ladders and men were being pushed aside—stripped of their purpose, their roles, their identity as leaders and providers.
As I listened, something clicked: He wasn’t describing a world where women gained power. He was describing a world where men stopped stepping into their power.
And that became the impetus for the hypothesis behind this article:
Women’s empowerment isn’t creating powerless men. Passive masculinity is.
The crisis isn’t that women are rising. (Although women are climbing, slowly – next article about that!) It’s that modern men aren’t rising with them.
1. Women Are Adapting to the New World. Men Often are Stuck in the Old One.
Women have accelerated in leadership over the past decade:
Women’s representation in senior leadership is the highest it has ever been
Women are leaving companies at lower rates than men (2023 McKinsey)
For the first time, women executives are reporting equal or greater ambition than men (2023 McKinsey)
Outperforming men on key competencies (Korn Ferry 2024)
Achieving economic parity in many markets (Pew 2023–24)
Women are building new muscles: emotional intelligence, collaborative influence, people development, purpose-driven strategy.
Meanwhile, many men have stayed attached to a leadership model built for a world that no longer exists. The issue isn’t capability—it’s evolution. (And in the age of AI, the winning edge is unmistakably human: EQ, influence, people skills, and purpose. That’s the leadership of the future.)
2. Women Didn’t Reject Male Leadership. Men Retreated From It.
The narrative says women no longer want male leadership. The data says something else:
Men’s engagement is collapsing.
Gallup (2022–24) shows men’s engagement and initiative dropping sharply—particularly in environments where women are thriving.
Men are investing less in their own development.
While women actively pursue coaching, sponsors, and stretch roles, men’s pursuit of growth has stalled (McKinsey 2023).
Men are defaulting to avoidance.
MIT Sloan (2023) found men who feel uncertain around strong women often withdraw—staying silent, detached, or minimally involved.
This isn’t displacement. It’s retreat.
Women didn’t eliminate male leadership. Men are abandoning the growth required to remain effective leaders.
3. Masculine Identity Collapsed. Nothing Replaced It.
For generations, men were taught their worth came from providing, protecting, producing, and leading from authority.
But today:
Women can provide.
Women can lead.
Women can influence.
Women can decide.
As roles shifted, women evolved. Men, in many cases, got stuck.
Pew Research (2023–24) shows men under 45 now report:
Higher identity confusion
Rising loneliness
Lower social support
Uncertainty about what “being a man” means
Women built empowering communities and leadership networks. Men didn’t. Their emotional infrastructure never modernized.
This isn’t masculinity breaking down. It’s masculinity overdue for an upgrade.
4. Modern Leadership Rewards Skills Men Were Never Allowed to Develop
Today’s top-performing leaders excel in:
Empathy
Collaboration
Coaching
Navigating ambiguity
Transparent communication
Purpose-driven decision making
Women score higher in these areas, and they were socially allowed to develop these muscles.
Traditionally, men were taught:
Emotional restriction
Avoidance
Dominance
Individualism
Men have been given an outdated playbook. When they cling to it, they weaken themselves. When they evolve beyond it, they become exceptional leaders.
5. Women (and Men) Still Want Strong Leadership
Here’s what’s critical to understand:
Women have not rejected male leadership. They’ve rejected leadership without courage.
Harvard Business Review, McKinsey, Deloitte, and Korn Ferry (2022–2024) all show women want leaders—male or female—who demonstrate:
Courageous communication
Decisive action
Integrity
Emotional intelligence
Clarity and accountability
Women aren’t asking men to step back. They’re asking men to step up—bravely, competently, humanly. Leadership doesn’t need to be “reclaimed” by men, it needs to be redefined by all of us.
6. The Path Forward: A New Era of Masculine Leadership
Men are not meant to be quieter, smaller, or hesitant. They are meant to be:
Courageous: Silence and avoidance are top predictors of team dysfunction (MIT Sloan 2023).
Adaptive: Evolution, not dominance, defines strong modern leaders.
Emotionally intelligent: Leaders with EQ outperform traditional command-and-control models (Korn Ferry 2024).
Collaborative: Gender-balanced leadership teams consistently win. (Deloitte 2024)
Men should build their identity grounded in values not outdated gender roles. Purpose today comes from character and contribution—not control.
The Bottom Line
Feminism didn’t strip men of power. Women didn’t stop wanting male leadership.
Men simply weren’t challenged—or required—to evolve their leadership until now.
The world doesn’t need men who sit back and watch women rise.
It needs men who embrace a modern, courageous masculinity— one strong enough to stand beside powerful women, confident enough to collaborate, and grounded enough to lead with purpose instead of ego.
Because the next era won’t be defined by gender but by leadership anchored in purpose, courage, and humanity.