This invisible career ceiling is holding women back

New data shows how autoimmune disease is quietly limiting women’s careers. Here’s what employers can do about it.

[Source Photo: Freepik]

On my last day at my old job, I couldn’t go in.

I’d been burning through sick days for months (more than I could explain to my manager) because I didn’t yet have words for what was happening to me. I was 25, running product at a tech company, trying to build a career while quietly unraveling. I’d been to the ER twice that year, seen a string of specialists, and been told by more than one doctor that my symptoms were probably psychological. I was terrified.

Eventually, I was diagnosed with autoimmune disease, a condition where the immune system attacks the body’s own tissue. An estimated 50 million Americans live with an autoimmune disease, and women make up 80% of those diagnosed. 

Caregiving, workplace bias, and motherhood are often cited as the barriers holding women back at work. Chronic illness almost never enters the conversation, even though more people in the workforce are managing it than most employers realize. For many women with autoimmune disease, there’s a different dynamic quietly shaping their careers.

I’ve come to think of it as an autoimmune “career ceiling.”

Unlike the traditional glass ceiling, this one doesn’t appear in a policy or a performance review. It shows up in small, private decisions women make alone, often without naming what’s driving them. Do you take the promotion with longer hours? Pursue the role that requires travel? Switch jobs and risk losing the insurance you can’t afford to lose?

To put numbers to what many women experience, WellTheory partnered with Wakefield Research and the Autoimmune Association to conduct a national survey of 250 working women in the U.S. living with autoimmune disease. What we found was clear: 70% said their disease had limited their career potential. Almost two in five (39%) have reduced their hours, and nearly a third have moved to less demanding roles to accommodate their condition. Two out of three, have stayed in a job they’d otherwise have left because they couldn’t afford to lose their health coverage.

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