Workplace fairness: when female bosses lack empathy.

I was three sentences into a routine business travel request when I saw it: the team get together trip had been brought forward to the exact week of my son’s 3rd birthday. Not near it. Not around it. On it and abroad. I stared at the screen for a moment longer than I needed to, waiting for the dates and venue to rearrange themselves into something less cruel. They didn’t.

I want to be honest about what happened next, because the honest version isn’t flattering to anyone, including me.

I raised it with my supervisor mid-discussion, half apologetic before I’d even finished the sentence, asking only for permission to leave on an earlier flight on the final day. I was not seeking for privilege treatment just because I am a working mother. I wasn’t thinking of skipping the trip or spin up a lie. I was asking for a few hours. I’d already started blaming myself before she said a word, telling myself a thousand times I should have submitted annual leave three months in advance, as if I could have predicted date and venue changes no one knew about. That’s the first thing worth noticing: I walked into that conversation already guilty, before anyone pinned all faults to me, like I’m the only troublemaker.

Then came the line, delivered in front of my colleagues, that I’ll be turning over for a long time: “It can be anyone’s birthday. Don’t come telling me you are planning to take the 8am flight home.” Flat. Final. Public.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t have the words ready, only boiling tears that arrived exactly as the meeting ended. They’d been queuing politely and waiting for the door to shut behind everyone else. My colleagues wrote to me afterwards, sorry and unsure what to say. The organiser said she would try shortening the agenda, the other said she wouldn’t mind swapping agenda if needed. My plan for the day, a nursery party bag drop before work, a small cake before bedtime, quietly folded itself away.

Here’s the part I keep circling back to. My supervisor is a woman. A mother. Her children are grown, which means she has already lived every version of this exact moment I’m dreading: the school play missed, the birthday shrunk to a rushed phone call, the years that don’t come back. She, of all people, had the fluency to at least say “I understand“. Instead, she chose “it can be anyone’s birthday“. That’s not a difference in policy. That’s a difference in empathy, and it’s the kind that stings more coming from someone who should know better.

Because it isn’t anyone’s birthday. It’s the birthday of a child I waited seven years to meet, two more years after his older sister. When you’ve done that kind of waiting, a birthday stops being a diary entry and becomes a special day to cherish memories from three years ago when he was born. Losing the chance to mark it properly isn’t an inconvenience. It’s a lifetime scar that no organisational chart gets to decide it doesn’t count.

Where is empathy in leadership? What unsettles me most is the gap between what companies say about supporting women and what actually happens when a woman is the one holding the calendar. The empowerment language is easy to print on a values page. It’s much harder to practise when the person asking for grace is a subordinate and the person granting it has already forgotten how heavy that particular week can feel.

The incidence is also reflection of the organisation who hires the leader in charged. I am glad I raised it and everyone in the team is now aware the type of leader we serve. Fairness at work was never going to be solved by having more women in charge. It’s solved by those women choosing to remember, on purpose, what it cost them, and refusing to make someone else pay the same price without a fight.

I haven’t resolved this. I’m not going to pretend a neat lesson arrived along with the tears. But I have decided a few things, and I’ll pass them on in case they’re useful to you too.

If a date or venue changes and they collide with something that matters, raise it in writing immediately, so you’re not relying on “he says, she says” memory later. Ask for what you actually need, not the maximum, because a small, specific request is harder to dismiss than a vague one. Don’t let guilt get there before you do; you are not responsible for decisions made by other people’s calendars. And notice who shows empathy and who performs it, because you’ll need that information again.

I still don’t know if I’ll see the earlier flight approved. But I know I’ll remember this incident precisely, how it felt to be told my son’s birthday was interchangeable. And I intend to make sure no one under me ever hears those words from mine.