---
title: "The Majority, Overlooked: Women & Career Opportunity In The Nonprofit Sector"
description: Women are the majority of the nonprofit sector, yet only 1 in 4 feel they are considered for career opportunities as much as men. Here’s what that costs.
image: https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/hubfs/AI-Generated%20Media/Images/Thoughtful%20Woman%20Looking%20Unsure%20At%20Doorway.png
---

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 November 9, 2026

# The Majority, Overlooked: Women & Career Opportunity In The Nonprofit Sector

![Picture of Dr. Dave Whiteside](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Dave%20Headshot%20.jpeg?width=50&name=Dave%20Headshot%20.jpeg) By  [Dr. Dave Whiteside](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/blog/author/dave-whiteside)  ·   7 minute read

Career decisions don't happen in a single moment. They happen in hundreds of small moments.

The stretch project that lands on your desk - or goes to someone else. That big client you land - or just miss out on. The gap you’re asked to step into - or never hear about. The manager who says “you’d be great at this” - or “let’s revisit it next year.”

These moments don't look like much on their own. But this is where growth actually happens; not in one big promotion, but in a steady run of chances, nudges and votes of confidence that come - or don't. When those small moments go your way, they build on each other. When they don’t, the missed chances build up too. Together, they shape who gets to grow, and who quietly starts wondering if it's time to leave.

Ask most senior nonprofit leaders, and they'll tell you that our sector has a development and succession planning problem. For example, the [Charity Insights Canada Project](https://carleton.ca/cicp-pcpob/2026/planning-for-tomorrow-why-succession-planning-still-lags-behind/) at Carleton University found that only 13% of Canadian charities have a well-defined succession plan in place, and 38% have no formal plan at all. Nearly half of charities (49%) have named leadership development and succession planning as areas where they need support. Our own [YMCA WorkWell Insights](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/insights) data shows the employee side - 30% of nonprofit employees who are considering leaving their organization say they’re looking for more professional development - behind only compensation and burnout as the top reasons for leaving.

The problem isn't new. But the problem isn't equal either.

Women make up the clear majority of Canada's nonprofit workforce. They represent 80% of all nonprofit respondents in our [Insights data](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/insights) - a share that is on par with the [Canadian health care industry](https://occupations.esdc.gc.ca/sppc-cops/l.3bd.2t.1ils@-eng.jsp?lid=85).

Typically, being the majority quietly works in your favour. The people around the table look like you, and the path forward was largely built by people like you. So you'd hope that in a sector so dominated by women, women would at the very least experience the same opportunities as men... Right?

So when we partnered with the [Women's Nonprofit Network](https://www.womensnonprofitnetwork.com/) to survey nearly 900 nonprofit women for our report, [The State of Women's Well-Being in Nonprofits](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/nonprofit-womens-wellbeing), we asked a simple question about those small moments:

*"Compared to men with similar backgrounds, do you feel that you are equally considered for career-advancing projects and opportunities?"*

Only 1 in 4 said "very much so." In a sector built largely by women, 74% of women didn't feel fully considered compared to men when it comes to the opportunities that move a career forward.

That's the irony at the heart of this data. Women are 4 in 5 of the nonprofit employees we measure, and yet, only 1 in 4 of the women we surveyed feel fully equal on their path forward.

> Being the majority isn't the same as being considered.

And as the data will show us, that feeling doesn't just impact career conversations. It shows up in burnout and retention too. So let's talk data.

The Majority Isn't Feeling Equal

Let's start big picture.

When we asked nonprofit women if they feel *equally considered* for career-advancing projects and opportunities, only a quarter said "very much so" (26%). Half (50%) said "somewhat" (50%) and another quarter said "not at all" (24%).

[https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/30859219/visualisation.json?ref=embed-script](https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/30859219/visualisation.json?ref=embed-script)

Let's sit with that for a second.

If you read our last post on the [Quiet Middle](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/blog/the-quiet-middle), the "somewhat" group will sound familiar. They aren't the group that raise alarm bells, but "somewhat" is definitely not a "yes" either. And when it comes to something as important as equal opportunity, the answer we are looking for is a resounding "yes". When you add in the women who said "not at all", 74% of respondents didn't feel equally considered for the opportunities that build a promising career.

It's also worth being clear about what this measures. We didn't measure *if* women got promoted, we measured how women *experience* the path forward - whether they feel the door is as open for them as it is for the men beside them. But perception matters here, because people make career decisions based on what they believe their options are. And as the data will show, perceptions come with some very real outcomes.

It Doesn't Go Away As You Climb

One assumption we hear is that this must be an early-career issue - that once women break into nonprofit leadership roles, the playing field levels out.

But the data doesn't back that up as much as you'd think.

When we break the data out by position, only 1 in 5 front line women (20%) responded "very much so". Among managers and supervisors, 1 in 4 (25%) feel fully considered, and among senior leaders - executive directors, VPs and directors - that number only rises to 31%. Not even 1 in 3.

[https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/30859331/visualisation.json?ref=embed-script](https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/30859331/visualisation.json?ref=embed-script)

So yes, it gets somewhat better as women move up the ladder. But "better" is *very* relative here. Even among senior leaders, more than 2 in 3 nonprofit women don't feel equally considered compared to men with similar backgrounds.

These are the women who have, by any outside measure, *made it.* They run programs, manage budgets, leads teams, and report to boards. And yet, most of them still don't feel the path forward is fully level.

Here are just read some of the comments we received:

> *"My male colleagues were promoted based on potential, while I had to show the experience. Potential wasn't enough."*
> 
> *"Female excellence is expected as a nonprofit leader in a way that male excellence just isn't."*

So if female excellence is considered necessary to advance, what is the impact of having to show that day in and day out?

The data shows that impact is very real.

## When You're Overlooked, You Burn Out

Here's where this stops being just a career conversation and becomes a well-being conversation.

We asked respondents how often they'd experienced burnout in the last three months. When we compared that to how equally considered they felt, the pattern was hard to miss. When asked about whether they felt equally considered compared to men, 26% of those who reported "very much so" reported burnout "often" or "extremely often." That number rose to 35% among the "somewhats" - and to 56% among those who said "not at all."

That's more than double.

The same pattern shows up in who is thinking about leaving. One in four women who felt fully considered (25%) were at risk of leaving - questioning their future either in the sector or in their current organization. That is too high of a rate, but among those who felt "not at all" considered, that number climbed to nearly half (46%). Again, nearly double the rate.

[https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/30859479/visualisation.json?ref=embed-script](https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/30859479/visualisation.json?ref=embed-script)

It's fair to ask whether something else is driving this. Maybe women in certain roles, or women with heavier caregiving loads, are both more burnt out and more likely to feel overlooked. So we tested that too. Even after accounting for things like position, age, caregiving at home, whether someone lives with a partner, race and years in the sector, the link held. Women who did not feel equally considered at all were still significantly more likely to report frequent burnout and to be considering leaving the sector.

This isn't causal data, so we can't make claims on what comes first here - but frankly, I'm not sure that it really matters. Being overlooked can wear you down - and in a sector where [burnout among women in particular is already rampant](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/nonprofit-womens-wellbeing), someone running on empty may see the road ahead more harshly. Chances are, it's a bit of both, with each feeding the other. Either way, the message for leaders is the same: this isn't a "soft" perception issue with no consequences. Not feeling equally considered comes with a clear burnout and turnover risk.

The women who told us *why* they were considering leaving the sector reinforced this. Among those who felt "not at all" considered, more than half (56%) named limited opportunities for advancement as a critical reason - and 1 in 3 named feeling undervalued as a woman in the sector, compared to just 1 in 20 of those who felt fully considered.

## The Hidden Story In It All

Here's where things might get a little counterintuitive. When we looked at the link between consideration and burnout within each position, the relationship was strongest at the top.

Senior leaders (C-suite, VPs and Directors) who felt "not at all" considered reported frequent burnout at nearly *three times* the rate of those who felt fully considered (66% vs. 24%), and the pattern was similar for managers and supervisors, where frequent burnout more than doubled (43% vs. 18%).

[https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/30859627/visualisation.json?ref=embed-script](https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/30859627/visualisation.json?ref=embed-script)

 

For front line women, the story was different - largely because burnout was so high in front line regardless of consideration. What's the story here? For leaders, being overlooked seems to carry a heavier cost - perhaps because they've invested more in the climb, and can see more clearly what the next rung looks like and who gets to step onto it. For the front line, burnout is largely driven by other considerations. Front-line women report the heaviest financial strain in our data, and for many of them, opportunity alone won't solve a pay problem.

> *But the hidden story in it all is that the higher women climb in the nonprofit sector, the more being overlooked costs them and their organizations.*

## What This Means For Leaders

Career opportunity can feel like something that happens organically - the right person, the right project, the right timing. But "organic" is often where bias does its quietest work. Here are some places leaders can lean in to start to address this:

1. Ask the question. Good leaders often ask employees if they feel valued, but it's equally important to ask whether people feel they have an equal shot at the next opportunity and a clear plan for their development - especially women. This is an important question to integrate into your 1:1s and even your [employee survey](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/insights) if you want to dig deeper at the organizational level.
2. Make the path clear and visible. Write down how stretch projects, acting roles and promotions are assigned - and share it. When the criteria aren't clear, people fill in the gaps with their own experience, and for many women, that experience says the door isn't fully open.
3. Track who gets the stretch work. The opportunities that build careers usually aren't the promotions themselves. They're the high-profile projects, the board presentations and the acting roles that come first. Look at who has been handed those over the last year. If the pattern surprises you, you have somewhere to start.
4. Don't assume your senior women are fine. The link between feeling overlooked and burnt out was strongest among senior leaders. Losing these leaders is a succession problem most nonprofits will feel for years. Ask them directly what the next step looks like, what's in the way, and how they can best be supported in getting there.
5. Pair opportunity with pay. Development paths matter, but they mean little if someone can't afford to stay long enough to walk them. For front-line staff and promising young leaders in particular, a competitive wage is the foundation every other opportunity is built on.

## The Quick Takeaway

Women make up the clear majority of the nonprofit sector - and yet only 26% of the women we surveyed feel fully feel they are considered as much as men for the projects and opportunities that move careers forward. Even among senior leaders, more than 2 in 3 don't.

And it matters. Women who do not feel considered are twice as likely to report frequent burnout and twice as likely to be considering leaving the sector - with the strongest links among the very leaders organizations can least afford to lose.

The nonprofit sector depends on the women who lead it, deliver it and hold it together. They have already proven their commitment. The question is whether we're offering the same consideration in return.

The good news is the same as it always is: seeing it is the first step. And unlike many of the challenges in our sector, this one doesn't need a new funding stream to start fixing. It starts with who we ask, who we invite, and who we picture in the next role.

> Want to know how opportunity is showing up in your organization? Our WorkWell Insights Reports give people leaders and executives the data they need to turn insights into action.
> 
> Learn more on our [Insights Page](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/insights)or reach me directly at [dave.whiteside@ymcathreerivers.org](mailto:dave.whiteside@ymcathreerivers.org). We'd love to help.
> 
> [![Get started with WorkWell Insights](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/hs-fs/hubfs/insights%20ad-1.jpg?width=1920&height=835&name=insights%20ad-1.jpg)](https://www.ymcaworkwell.com/insights)

 

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