Women are significantly under-represented in decision-making. Every board we sit on, every crisis team we staff, every organisation we advise is making decisions with an incomplete picture of who is affected.
That is not a fairness argument alone, though it is a real one. It is a quality argument. A leadership team that has never had to consider how an absence policy lands on half its workforce has not finished thinking about the problem.
Through the crisis and after it
The pandemic made the point forcefully. The qualities that carried organisations through it — empathy, candour, willingness to revise a decision in public — are qualities the sector had spent decades describing as soft. They turned out to be load-bearing.
At the same time, emerging evidence of differential impacts made it clear that gender analysis was not optional. Involving women leaders and diversity experts in response design produced measurably better outcomes. Crisis response, it turns out, is exactly the kind of problem where the composition of the room shows up in the result.
Two levers we actually pull
Advancing women to senior executive roles, and building the organisations that develop them.
- Closing the specific, identified steps between a strong VP and a seat at the table.
- Sponsorship, not just mentorship — someone with the authority to put your name forward.
- Publishing gender pay and promotion data, because what is measured moves.
- Building the leadership bench deliberately rather than waiting for it to appear.
A leadership team that has never considered who is missing from the table has not finished the analysis.