How I became passionate about DEI and dismantling barriers to women's success

It was a sunny weekday in May, the kind of early summer’s day that bring the promise of summer with real warmth on your skin. Except I’d just left a meeting in the city with my then boss about returning to work from maternity leave, and I felt freezing cold and shaky. Rather than having a constructive conversation, I’d been told in no uncertain terms that the only option was for me to commit to a minimum of 4 or even 5 days a week, because my boss wanted to know I was ‘in the office more than I was at home,’ and that my work was more important to me than my adorable first born, who was then 9 months old. I was so shocked that I don’t remember much else of what was said, focusing instead on trying to calm my breathing as my heart was racing, and trying to get out of there as quickly as possible. The smell of furniture polish from the board room’s mahogany table wasn’t helping one bit.

For the first time, I truly understood that my worth to the company was simply in how much they could get from me, and that they didn’t see my years of experience and knowledge as more important than how many days of the week I’d be in. Now that I was a mother, my commitment was up for debate when it had never been questioned before. I was often the first one in or the last one out, always there to make sure the deadlines were met and the quality was up to scratch. I’d never personally felt the adage that women have to work twice as hard and achieve twice as much to prove their worth before, but now it felt like a stark reality.?

I resigned. My city career was over.?

There followed an unexpected period of grief and identity confusion, while I figured out who I was now, no longer a new mother on maternity leave from her promising city career, now ‘just a mother’. My confidence took a hit, as I’d relied more than I’d realised on rooting my self-worth and identity in my job, work achievements and all that came alone with it; it didn’t help that my (now ex) husband seemed to place little value on what I contributed to the family, once telling me I didn’t deserve a lie in anymore because I didn’t make the money.?

Fast forward to 2020. I’d been divorced 8 years, successfully single parenting, and had a multi award-winning coaching/speaking business that I’d grown since the divorce, supporting senior and ambitious women with their self-worth, confidence and leadership skills. Countless peers and business coaches insisted that writing a book would elevate my profile and solidify my status as a expert, so I bit the bullet, hired a book coach and got writing.?

The working title was ‘F*&k Not Good Enough: unshakeable confidence from the inside out’. The first chapter was an in-depth analysis of why women don’t feel good enough, and the more I wrote, the more it was abundantly clear that the problem wasn’t anything women were doing themselves. It wasn’t mindset, it certainly wasn’t anyone ever using the wrong tone of voice. What came sharply into focus in a way it had never before, was the myriad of forces out there in the world that tell women we aren’t good enough: diet culture, media, gender pay gap, stereotyping, porn and the objectification of women, the normalisation of misogyny, religion, legal systems, gendered ageism, design, lack of political influence, skewed political and corporate policy, victim blaming, psychiatric and medical bias…

Off the back of writing this chapter, I created a talk called ‘Women & The Self-Worth Crisis: A call to action’ where I laid all of these external influences out and elevated the conversation way above individual mindset. It swiftly became by most popular and impactful talk. The first time I gave it in person was at the Women Leaders Association’s Annual Conference. Several women came to me afterwards, tearfully saying they finally understood how deep the problem was and that it really wasn’t their mindset. They felt liberated and courageously ready to try to tackle the system. The men in the room confided in me that they?thought?they had understood what was holding women back before, but now they knew the truth on a completely different level. They also felt called to create change to make things better for women. I knew that big picture change was my true calling, that supporting women with their confidence and leadership was not going to make enough of a difference overall despite how experienced and skilled I was at it.

Around the same time, I trained in the psychology of victim blaming of women and girls subjected to male violence; this deepened my understanding of systemic misogyny and brought out what I can only describe as a burning rage and energy to do my bit to fix the system. I knew that every single client of mine, every friend, every colleague, had experienced male violence to one extent or another, and we had all been blamed - what did you say/do/wear to make him do that to you – and worse, we all blamed ourselves and we all felt inadequate off the back of it. Yet none of it was our fault or truly had any meaning for our worth.?

Here we are in 2023, and the system still needs to be fixed. While progress has been made, there is still a distance to go. Misogyny and violence against women and girls remain a major issue worldwide, and in some countries women’s rights are being rolled back rather than progressing. Content tagging Andrew Tate, the poster boy of modern misogyny and a self-confessed sex trafficker, has had 12 billion times on TikTok alone, enough for every man on the planet to have watched his content four times each.?

The gender pay gap will take well over 100 years to close at its current rate, and women from the global majority are still paid less than their white counterparts. In the corporate world, here in the UK there are just 9 out of 100 female CEOs in the FTSE 100, and while the percentage of women on boards has been rising, we are nowhere near parity when it comes to women in management, senior or board level positions. This is for a variety of reasons including the cost of childcare, promotion bias, harmful gender stereotypes around leadership skills and what it takes to be successful, inequality in caring responsibilities and more.?

The work I do helps companies in traditionally masculine industries including all things financial, tech, and legal, to move beyond a phenomenon I’ve identified and labelled as the diversity glass ceilingTM.?

This is a scenario that happens when the first, and always well-meaning, layers of DEI initiatives have been put in place, yet the internal culture hasn’t come on board fully, there is push back and the company struggles to shift to a truly diverse workforce where everyone feels included and valued. Diverse staff don’t always feel that they belong, safe and that they want to stay.?

As a speaker, facilitator, trainer and coach, with a background in psychology, a decade in investments and a further decade coaching senior women on confidence and leadership, I support my clients to recruit and retain the best female talent at all levels; to shift their culture to one of outstanding allyship and to get a genuine ROI on their gender-focused DEI initiatives.?

I offer a range of services from one off workshops designed to start a different kind of conversation about DEI, to a series of workshops, programs and consultancy that help companies break through the diversity glass ceiling TM. I also run-in house confidence and leadership programs for senior and “rising star” women and take on a handful of 1-2-1 coaching clients each year for bespoke support, always coming from the angle that while women benefit from learning new skills, the biggest impact comes from simultaneous cultural shifts.?

I do not work with companies that do not buy into the idea that true diversity , inclusive culture and gender balance are worth striving towards, where DEI efforts could be described as performative ‘diversity washing’ rather than genuine. I am not the right person if you are looking for someone to come in for a one-off workshop to ‘fix women’s mindset’, so that you can tick the ‘empowering women’ box for this year.?

If your company is serious about diversity, equity and inclusion, creating a culture of outstanding, inclusive allyship, and working towards gender balance, then let’s talk.?Book into my dairy on this link: https://bit.ly/HWCconsultation

#womenleaders #diversity #DEI #leadershipdevelopment #genderbalance