International Women's Day 2025
On IWD, I want to talk about how women can be the change our businesses and society need in these turbulent times.
I should start by saying that I fundamentally believe that there are very many abilities shared by great leaders, whatever their gender, race, disability or other defined characteristics. As they say, many of my best friends are men!
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I know we must all guard against unconscious bias, but I do not expect a different set of standards from my boss depending on whether I’m working for a woman, somebody in a wheelchair or any other aspect of difference that we often spend so much time debating.
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A good leader is a good leader. I try to be that myself - to set out a clear and meaningful goal, to lay out the path by which we’re going to access the goal, and to provide measures and milestones to judge our progress by, encouraging the team when we do well and engaging everyone if things don’t go to plan.
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I do however believe there are characteristics more commonly found in women leaders that I have worked with, which make them attracted to, and powerful in, slightly different
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Perhaps this is because we are still relatively new to the leadership ecosystem inside our businesses and other defining organisational structures of society like our law courts, our senior civil service, our educational establishments and our professional services disciplines.
As such, we are perhaps more open to change, and more likely to challenge the status quo, arguably being less constrained by decades even centuries of doing things in one particular way.
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I have had a lot of experience recently of working with women collaborating in a powerful partnership to disrupt traditional boundaries and ways of working. This is particularly true of the work I have been doing to unlock the potential of people with disabilities inside our businesses and work places
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Two weeks ago I cohosted a major online conference called ActionAble2025. The goal was to join forces across businesses in a day of action to support disability inclusion at work.
My partner in co-producing this conference was Leigh Smyth, an incredible female entrepreneur who I have worked with to create change in a number of ways over the last 10 years.
The keynote speakers, all at the head of their professional organisations, were with one exception Female. The CEO of Business Disability Forum Diane Lightfoot, CEO of the CBI Rain Newton Smith, Founder of Purple Space Kate Nash, Founder of the valuable 500 Caroline Casey, a Global Business editor of a major newspaper Ruth Sunderland, and the CEO of Channel 4 Alex Mahon. The one exception was Mark Hodgkinson, the CEO of Disability charity, Scope.
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11 of our 14 Panel Chairs and three quarters of the team from key sponsors, Lloyds Banking Group and Channel 4, were also female.
Working with this outstanding group of women was an absolute pleasure. And two things struck me in the process:
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Although we started out as five or six separate organisations, by the time we finished we were clearly one team, united by a desire to make a difference, without reference to individual egos and without the usual politics about who owned what.
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And I was struck by the scale of progress that could be achieved by individuals wanting to further a common cause. Leigh and I had the idea of action able in early summer 2024. Between us, with no resources except a powerful idea and the willingness to leave no stone unturned in bringing our idea to fruition, we created the framework for an event where 1700 people signed up including leaders from the country’s biggest employers, supermarkets, High Street brands, leading banks and most well known hospitality businesses all the way through to local councils and individual charities.
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On the way to the conference I met many incredible people with very personal stories of personal triumphs. None more so than Martha Lane Fox, whose humility shines through her extraordinary personal brush with death. She shared her reflections in the Sunday Times last weekend.
We now have 20 hours of pure gold content from our world leading speakers, a mine of expert information from 30+ specialist service providers, all available free to anyone (link below) who can use it to create good, which we will now be using to influence government, support major corporations with their transformation journeys and empower individuals to create change in their workplace.
https://impactmatchrooms.ivent-pro.com/events/actionable-2025/schedule
I do not believe that this outcome would have been achievable, in this way, in this timeframe, had this not been a project led by women, prepared to put themselves on the line for what they believe to be right and to put ego to one side in favour of creating change that counts.
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My takeout for international women’s day is that we should all reflect on what we can do as individuals, that we all stand up for the change that we want to see, and that we each then play our part in making that change a reality.