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What if flexibility isn’t something women should have to earn, but something work should have been designed around all along? When Marilla Akkermans returned to work in 2018, she could see that the only thing part-time about her role would be her pay. So she resigned, and built the agency she couldn’t find. Eight years later, Equality Media + Marketing runs a four-day week at full pay, offers 19 additional days of inclusive leave, and recorded 447% year-on-year profit growth in 2025. Marilla is clear that none of this is altruism. It is commercial logic. In this conversation, Kristy and Marilla trace why flexibility so often turns into productivity theatre, what changes when trust is given rather than earned, how a time audit and a handful of meeting rules made a four-day week possible, and why rest is the fuel for revenue, not its enemy. In this episode Marilla shares Why the only thing that was going to be part-time about her role was her wage, and why she built a business instead The pattern she saw again and again: talented women leaving powerful roles and returning from parental leave as “a back of house resource” “Choose your hard”: why the effort of designing a better workplace pays for itself in retention Why judging people by presence instead of output is “lazy leading” Her contract with her team: “It’s not yours to earn, it’s yours to break” Why she designs roles to about 70% and lets people shape the last 30% Why she doesn’t get it right 100% of the time, and why that is not a reason to avoid trying Why work-life balance doesn’t exist, and why the four-day week is “a gift, not a given” Her answer to the claim that working from home is a career killer for women: workplaces were never built for women, and if men took as much flexibility, women wouldn’t need as much The uncomfortable truth few people say out loud: it is often easier to go to work than to care for people What three months of time tracking revealed before the four-day week trial: half the team’s time went on admin and internal tasks The meeting rules that changed everything: around 70% fewer internal meetings, no meeting without an agenda or follow-up notes, and 45 minutes instead of an hour The three mistakes organisations make when they introduce flexibility without structural change: not consulting people, not fixing workload and tools, and not training Why she introduced a personal health budget instead of a “spray and pray” approach, and how she experiences spacious success on her drive home Key Quotes “I’m giving you my trust. It’s not yours to earn, it’s yours to break.” “You give these women what they need, they give you more in return.” “If men took more flexibility so that they could pick their children up from school as many days a week as their partner does... then women wouldn’t need as much flexibility.” Timestamps (00:47) The headline that stopped Kristy mid-scroll (04:28) Why flexibility was built into Equality from day one (06:32) The exodus of talented women from media (08:15) Location flexibility versus schedule flexibility (09:55) When women have to prove they deserve flexibility (12:52) “It’s not yours to earn, it’s yours to break” (14:54) Permission not to get it right every time (18:37) Is working from home a career killer for women? (21:33) “It’s easier to go to work” (25:49) Does a four-day week really work? (28:40) Meeting bloat and the cost of interruptions (29:58) Rest isn’t the enemy of revenue (35:15) When the model fits the women (36:29) The three mistakes organisations make with flexibility (41:48) How Marilla experiences spacious success Marilla Akkermans 🟩 Equality Media + Marketing: https://equalitymedia.co/ 🟩Marilla Akkermans on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilla-akkermans/ Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin 🟩 Website: drkristygoodwin.com 🟩 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin 🟩 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/ 🟩 Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking References ActivTrak. (2026, March 11). 2026 state of the workplace: AI adoption and workforce performance benchmarks. https://www.activtrak.com/blog/2026-state-of-the-workplace Akkermans, M. (2026, April). My business grew to $17 million when I stopped asking women to prove they deserved flexibility. Women’s Agenda. https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/my-business-grew-to-17-million-when-i-stoped-asking-women-to-prove-they-deserved-flexibility/ Gartner. (2022, October 24). Gartner HR research identifies new framework for organizations to succeed in today’s fragmented workplace [Press release]. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2022-10-24-gartner-hr-research-identifies-new-framework-for-organizations-to-succeed-in-todays-fragmented-workplace Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. M., & Harris, J. (2005). No task left behind? Examining the nature of fragmented work.
