For senior women leaders, networking was once a powerful driver for visibility and opportunity. But after a certain stage in their career, something shifts. Networking starts to feel less like momentum, or movement and more like an endless cycle of coffees, events, and polite conversations that deliver little to no strategic return for them.
This isn’t because women in leadership don’t value connection, they do. But as KELLA’s founder Hannah Wrixon puts it, “Networking has gotten a bad name because so much of it rewards visibility, volume, and extroversion.” Presence is often mistaken for progress, and senior leaders feel that disconnect acutely.
The Leadership Reality
Despite progress, women remain underrepresented where power is most concentrated.
In 2025, women made up almost one-third of senior executives in Ireland, yet fewer than 1 in 5 CEOs were women, and female board representation remained below 30% (CSO, Business Survey 2025). Many Irish businesses still have no women in senior management at all (Grant Thornton Ireland, 2025).
These figures reflect partial progress and also highlight the structural barriers where visibility does not yet translate into influence or decision-making power.
Where Traditional Networking Falls Short
For senior women, the return on time invested (ROTI) from traditional networking often does not deliver because of numerous reasons. For instance, the network is not the right fit, the network is too vast and not curated, or focused only on women in senior leadership.
As Hannah notes, “At senior level, networking only works when it’s intentional and designed for ROTI, Return on Time Invested. Otherwise, it’s just more noise.”
Traditional networking formats tend to:
Reward presence, not progress
Being invited into rooms doesn’t automatically lead to sponsorship, advocacy, or opportunities.
Prioritise breadth over depth
Surface-level connections rarely support the nuanced, high-stakes challenges of senior leadership.
Reinforce old power patterns
Many networking channels still operate through systems shaped by historical privilege, where access to sponsorship remains uneven.
The result of this is that Networking can feel performative rather than progressive for senior women leaders, an unrealistic demand in already overloaded calendars.
What Senior Women Actually Need
At senior levels, networking must be intentional and outcome-oriented. The most valuable connections are those that:
- Create real opportunities (sponsorship, board seats, roles, etc.), not just introductions
- Offer peer-level challenges, sounding boards and strategic exchange
- Translate connection into influence and tangible impact
- Return on Time Invested (ROTI), as time is the scarcest leadership resource
This is why many senior women are choosing depth over breadth, alignment over attendance, and impact over optics.
Traditional networking wasn’t built for the realities of senior women leaders. But connection still matters, when it sustains ambition, strengthens influence, and makes leadership less isolating.
That shift is already underway. And senior women are leading it.