10 Mistakes Women’s ERGs Often Make

Now I don’t want to feel like I’m picking on women’s ERGs—but we have to have a real conversation. I’ve let some time pass since Women’s History Month to deliver this info, and now feels like the right moment.

First, a Shoutout

Before I get started: shout out to you for doing the work.

I truly believe that volunteers who take their time to help other volunteers are amazing people. So when I say this, I’m not coming at you personally.

But there are a lot of inherent biases and common practices that I see within women’s ERGs that are actually hurting your ERG and your ability to help people feel a sense of belonging.

Let’s address some of them—directly.

1. Homogenous Leadership Teams

Let’s address the elephant in the room: a lot of women’s ERGs are made up of primarily white women (probably already relatively senior as well). That’s a problem.

You might not even realize it. So I’m going to hold your hand when I say this:

If your team is homogenous, your programming is also going to appeal to that majority group. Even if you have a token minority—(isn’t that ironic?)—are they actually going to feel psychologically safe enough to speak up?

Unfortunately, a lot of women’s ERGs have essentially become the white women’s ERG. And no one’s talking about that.

Now to be clear: I’m not saying you should select ERG leads based on race—that opens up a whole new set of issues. But we do need to acknowledge that this is a problem. I’ve had members tell me they don’t even feel comfortable volunteering for women’s ERGs because “it feels like it’s not for me.”

Maybe no one told y’all that. So this is me, telling you.

2. The Speaker & Panel Trap

Let me say this explicitly: There is nothing wrong with a speaker or a panel in itself. But if that’s all you do? That’s a huge problem.

And if you don’t believe me—go check. Literally go to The ERG Idea Hub right now and filter for Women’s ERGs. What do you see? Pretty much nothing but speakers and panels. I’m not making this up.

This is a variety problem. You’re not offering diverse programming types, and you’re likely building programming around your own interests. That’s great for you, but it’s not great for the 90% of members who don’t share those same interests.

No wonder you’re not engaging your full member base.

Your programs might feel fulfilling to the leadership team, but ERGs exist to serve the community—not just the leads. We have to start getting more creative and intentional with our formats. If the only tool in your toolbox is a speaker or a panel, don’t be surprised when people stop showing up.

Plugging The ERG Recipe Book - 50 examples of CREATIVE programming formats that you all can apply to your ERG 🙂 

3. Surface-Level Programming

Let’s be real. “Supporting women in the workplace” is a bland, generic theme that I see way too often.

What’s interesting is that many women’s ERGs default to this kind of surface-level programming in an effort to “appeal to all women.” But even then, it still ends up centering the dominant demographic within leadership—again, typically white women.

So let’s just call a spade a spade:

We have to stop doing vanilla programming.

We need to niche down and get hyper-specific.

4. Shying Away from Hard Topics

Often times, Women’s ERGs shy away from the hard topics - big problem.

What do you do if your boss—who’s also a woman—isn’t supportive? What if she’s a bully? What about period culture in the workplace? Maternal bias? All the “taboo” topics?

We need to lean in to these kinds of topics. Because surface-level programming isn’t cutting it anymore (not just for Women’s ERGs, but ERGs across the board). Women’s ERGs often keep things light and “positive.” But sometimes, we need to get uncomfortable. Real belonging for our members doesn’t come from avoiding the elephant in the room.

5. Educational Overload

I know I already mentioned speakers and panels. But even beyond that, so many women’s ERGs only run educational events. Even if you do something different format-wise, the core of it is often still just… educational.

And listen—not everyone joins an ERG to learn. Some people want fun. Some want to give back. Some just want to feel seen.

If all your programming is educational, you’re excluding a chunk of your members. No wonder they aren’t engaging.

6. Oversized Leadership Teams

This one… I say with love. There’s an interesting (and slightly uncomfortable) pattern where women’s ERGs feel like they deserve more leadership seats than others. And listen—I get it. You’ve got the biggest ERG, the most members, the longest history.

But that doesn’t mean you need 10+ people on your leadership team. I’ve seen it too often—women adding more women to the team, with zero accountability. Let me be blunt:

You don’t need more hands. You need more structure.

Have a core set of functions that need to get done. Create task-based roles. Until your structure isn’t a mess, don’t scale it.

And honestly? A lot of y’all need to cut people from your leadership team. There are folks sitting on your leadership team right now doing nothing. Let them go. An engaged member is just as important as an engaged lead. Turning a member into a disengaged lead is worse.

7. Resistance to Change

This one might just be me… but I don’t think it is.

When change is introduced—especially around structure—it’s almost always the women’s ERG that pushes back.

“We’ve been around the longest.”

“We’re the biggest.”

“We’re the most successful ERG - why are you trying to change things?”

Because. Your structure is chaotic. Your consistency is low. And if we’re being honest? Your engagement is probably low too. Your Communications Channel is silent. Your events are attended by the same group of people.

And when those few core members get tapped to be leads, they burn out. Because the roles aren’t clear, the workload isn’t balanced, and the structure isn’t sustainable. I get that we’re trying to protect what’s been established, but it’s time to take it to the next level.

8. Premature Chapter Expansion

This one’s a cousin to the last one. Women’s ERGs are almost always the first to ask for chapters. But again—you don’t scale mess.

If you haven’t nailed high engagement and sustainable structure at your current level, you’re not ready for chapters. You need to maximize what you’ve got first. Then expand.

9. Surface-Level Intersectionality

A lot of women’s ERGs go for the most generic version of intersectionality.

A nod to the Black ERG during Black History Month. A Pride panel in June. (Almost always a panel 🤦🏿‍♀️) It’s checkbox programming. I want to challenge you to go deeper. Do something with the group you’re least likely to collaborate with.

10. Thinking Bigger = Better

And in many cases, this mindset causes another issue I see constantly:

Some women’s ERGs look down on other ERGs.

There’s this unspoken attitude like, “we’re better” because you’ve got more members. And that’s part of why you don’t do real intersectional programming. You don’t see the value in other communities.

I see this in probably 33% to 50% of the companies I work with. And in those orgs? The other ERGs are starting to resent you for it.

Let’s be honest:

If we ran the numbers, your engagement is probably low.

Your member-to-engaged-member ratio? Also probably low.

Your communications channel? Likely silent except when an event is coming up.

We’ve got to stop equating size with success. It’s misleading—and it’s damaging the reputation of your ERG more than you think.

There are so many opportunities for women’s ERGs to become powerful spaces of transformation—not just belonging, but skill-building, visibility, and leadership development.

But to do that, we have to stop doing what’s easy. Stop defaulting to the same formats, same folks, same stories.

I hope this gave you something to think about—and I say this because I want women’s ERGs to win…I want the ENTIRE ERG PROGRAM to win.

P.S. Join this week’s First Friday ERG Call this Friday at 1pm EST / 10am PST

P.P.S. ERG PMs - Episode two of our mini masterclass from The Bear is out