Canva layoffs: Do women CEOs handle mass layoffs differently from men?

When Canva CEO Melanie Perkins announced a restructuring affecting 1,271 employees, the conversation was not limited to the number of jobs impacted. It also centred on how the company was treating those leaving, with its six-month salary package, healthcare coverage, career support and startup grants drawing praise on social media.The response has raised a larger question - do women CEOs handle layoffs differently from their male counterparts? While there is no straightforward answer, academic research and conversations with women leaders suggest that gender, personal values and organisational culture all play a role in shaping leadership.A 2025 study titled Female Top Managers and Layoffs, published in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, examined 1,283 firms across 10 countries. It found no significant difference in layoffs between female-led and male-led firms before the Covid-19 pandemic.However, during the pandemic, female-led firms experienced significantly higher layoff rates. The researchers also found that stronger formal institutions reduced this relationship. The findings challenge the assumption that women leaders necessarily avoid layoffs because of greater empathy towards employees.EMPATHY IS NOT EXCLUSIVE TO WOMENChetna Israni, co-founder and director of Morning Star Brandcom, believes the way leaders handle layoffs has more to do with personal values than gender. "I wouldn't necessarily attribute this to gender, although I do believe women leaders often bring a different sensitivity to people and relationships," she says.Drawing from her entrepreneurial experience, Israni says she prefers direct conversations, adequate notice and giving people the dignity of understanding why a professional relationship is ending."The decision itself may be commercial, but the manner in which you communicate it is a reflection of who you are as a person," she says.Tanya Singh, global VP-marketing and transformation at Vertex Group, shares a similar view. Having worked with founders and business leaders across industries, she says she has seen both empathetic and insensitive leadership, irrespective of gender."As a woman leader, I would be careful about calling compassion a female trait. It boxes women into one kind of leadership and lets everyone else off the hook. Empathy is shaped by experience, and it is a choice any leader can make," Singh says.Singh points to the leadership journey of Gagan Arora, Founder and President of Vertex Group, as an example of how personal experience can shape decisions.Arora began his career as a contact centre agent, an experience that, she says, has influenced how he views employees and their livelihoods. When contact centres across the industry were shutting down, he publicly opened Vertex Group's doors to affected workers."When you have sat in that chair yourself, you never forget what a job means to someone at the start of their career," Singh says.WHAT DOES REPORTS, RESEARCH SAY?The International Labour Organization's (ILO) November 2026 report, Women in Business and Management: Scaling Success, offers another perspective. Based on a survey of 11,957 enterprises across 99 countries, it found that businesses led by female CEOs were 6.4 per cent more likely to report better business outcomes than those led by male CEOs.The report also found that 74.7 per cent of surveyed enterprises considered maternity leave and support programmes effective gender-equality initiatives. However, it does not establish that women CEOs offer better severance packages or handle layoffs more empathetically.THE BUSINESS DECISION AND THE HUMAN COSTBoth experts stress that empathy cannot come at the cost of business viability. Singh says leaders must communicate decisions honestly, provide meaningful transition support and remain visible after announcing job cuts.Israni points out that women leaders also face a double standard: they are expected to be nurturing but can be judged more harshly when they make tough decisions."A business relationship may have an end date. Basic human decency shouldn't," Israni says.Ultimately, the question may not be whether women CEOs make different layoff decisions, but whether leaders, regardless of gender, can make difficult business decisions without making employees feel disposable.- Ends