If you’re an assistant and you have to beg for:
➡️ access to meetings, emails, or calendars you’re expected to manage
➡️ basic respect
➡️ budget for training and development
➡️ or worse, time off to attend courses that you are paying for yourself
➡️ career progression
➡️ a seat at the table you already hold up
Let me be absolutely clear.
You are not asking for too much.
You are asking for the bare minimum.
And the fact that you’re being made to fight for it?
Should make every business leader ashamed!
We have normalised the absurd:
That the person managing the leader doesn’t get the same opportunities that every other employee takes for granted.
These are the people who enable the work of those at the top. Who hold the infrastructure of executive performance together. Who carry the context, the cadence, the unspoken knowledge that keeps everything running.
And yet, they are still being shut out. Overlooked. Undervalued. Not because they’re incapable – but because the systems around them haven’t caught up with reality.
Why should they be grateful for crumbs while carrying the weight of the role.
If an assistant is doing the work of a strategic partner without the same opportunities, pay, or access, they are being exploited.
We need, immediately to:
Stop pretending it’s fair when assistants are excluded from the career structures, development, and progression every other function takes for granted, and ask yourself why that is. Could it be because the profession is 98% women?
Stop dressing it up as how things have always been, when it’s really about keeping assistants in their place.
Stop treating them as junior staff when they’re managing the flow, pace, and priorities of the business.
It’s time the profession stopped begging, and started drawing the line.
