One giant step for womankind… and then an unexpected drop-off.

This is the reality of the women’s leadership labyrinth.

Nearly 20 years ago, Alice Eagly and Linda Carli gave that analogy its name. The path to women’s leadership, they argued, is no longer a glass ceiling, but a labyrinth that is navigable, yet full of turns, dead ends, and systemic challenges from discrimination to childcare. NASA just seemingly walked women as an entire gender into another unexpected turn.

But here is what I’ve came to know after spending a career in aerospace and completing my doctoral research on the women who have reached the top of the most extreme profession on Earth: the labyrinth is real, and while we must champion systemic change, waiting for the system to evolve is a losing strategy. The path through the leadership labyrinth is built from countless small, deliberate acts that happen in community.

I spent the last couple years studying 25 women astronauts (more than a fifth of every woman who has ever left the planet) through primary interviews, oral histories, and other secondary data, on the premise that if you want to understand how a high-performing woman comes to believe she can lead, in a boardroom, an operating room, or a C-suite, study the ones who had to believe it against the longest odds there are. We can learn a lot from these extraordinary women, and here’s what they taught me.

Leadership is a process

Leadership is not a skill developed in 12-week program or a journey that begins with a management title. Leadership development, in women especially, is a lifelong process of building self-efficacy – belief in oneself and their capability to do what they intend to – and it runs through five domains most women pass through: childhood, school, friendship, the workplace, and partner relationships.

For women, building the self-efficacy required to navigate the leadership labyrinth, to not be deterred when no women are selected for that next mission, starts at home and in the classroom. The women astronauts I studied were raised by parents who treated their daughter’s interests as valid and refused to pass down their own anxieties. For example, when 4-H wasn’t open to girls, Bonnie Dunbar‘s father started his own club so she could show cattle. Later, it was teachers who opened doors, like the advisor who pushed Kathy Sullivan into the science course that redirected her entire life. The takeaway for any parent or educator is simple: take girls’ ambitions and passions seriously, and open doors to pursue interests wherever possible, and the foundations of self-efficacy and leadership will follow.

Meanwhile, perhaps the most overlooked domain is women’s leadership development is friendship. Friendships provide everything from support networks to career references to role models. Emily Calandrelli and Amanda Nguyen made a pact to reach space and traded everything they learned until both did, and they supported each other in the face of sexist comments post-flight. Koch recently described finally admitting to her friends how hard it was to fly a supersonic jet and finding that her friends supported and understood her unique challenges. “Human spaceflight is the ultimate team sport,” she said. “And so is life.” Community building is where women thrive and also have the most agency to develop themselves as leaders—if childhood and your schooling didn’t build your belief, you can start building the friendships that support you at any time.

Notably, this research found that the workplace is not where leadership emerges but instead is where leadership grows. To obtain a management role, a person needs enough belief in themselves to raise their hand in the first place. Moreover, what moves women forward is action rather than encouragement. Nicole Stott‘s boss didn’t tell her she was a promising astronaut candidate; he simply told her to “pick up the pen and apply.” Eileen Collins‘ ROTC commander put her name forward to be a pilot before she even had to ask. For executives, the takeaway is that sponsorship beats praise, and leadership development begins as soon as employees enter the workforce by letting them take risks, try new tasks, supporting their self-efficacy.

Partnership is essential

Finally, the women astronauts nearly all reported that one of the most consequential leadership decisions they made was who they choose to build a life with. A supportive partner sustains the confidence of even the busiest leader, whereas an unsupportive one can dismantle it, particularly in early motherhood. The women I interviewed were blunt: encouragement from a partner without the action of problem solving and sharing labor is worthless. Yet with real support, motherhood made them better leaders. Despite countless challenges navigating both motherhood and being an astronaut, Cady Coleman realized best thing she could show her son was a mother carrying out a mission she was made for.

The conclusions from these findings are both uncomfortable and freeing. While women are going to continue to navigate a labyrinth that is slow to evolve, developing women leaders is not an elusive challenge for people ops teams to improve in a silo. Developing women leaders is a parent’s job, a teacher’s, a friend’s, a manager’s, and a partner’s.

The first woman reached the Moon because, for decades, people continued to tell a young Christina that her interests were valid, she was capable of pursing her dreams, and supported her along the way.

The walls of the labyrinth will move when they move, but a woman’s belief in her ability to persist and navigate can be developed and improved right now in yourself and in the women and girls in your own life, be they your employees, your students, your friends or your daughters.

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