an introduction

looking backwards

Increasingly, towards the end of each year, I find myself overwhelmed by the feeling of waiting. More so than the desire to reflect, and more so - unfortunately - than any decision to be conscious and present in any individual moment. Instead, I am anticipating the new year, and the new person I will promise - and then, inevitably, fail - to become. It doesn't help that January is generally regarded as the most awful of the months; everyone is broke, fed up with crap weather, and most likely attempting a new diet or to give up alcohol to rid themselves of some sort of misplaced holiday guilt.

Reflection, for me, has always had to be a conscious thing. I have to choose to do it. And especially so last year, in what was undeniably the hardest of my career so far; I faced a turbulent market, a growth in responsibilities that I was perhaps not ready for and navigating a workplace post-layoffs. About halfway through the year, I found myself in an environment where my female friends - my community, at work - were no longer in the business after some layoffs. There is a saying about only realising what you have when it is gone, and I am sorry to say that whoever said it first is correct. I did not realise exactly how much of an impact the women around me had on my everyday life. Not only in terms of their companionship and friendship, but in terms of the culture that had been created around us - because of us. Coupled with this, our CEO went on maternity leave. Suddenly, I had a male leader for the first time.

For the first month, I ignored that the layoffs had been an issue: I told myself that I was a leader, and as a leader, I was not allowed to have a personal reaction to them. I accepted the additional responsibilities that the layoffs had created, and I stepped up. I buried myself in work, and dedicated my time to proving to everyone that I could be a good leader (and, as I'm sure many of my colleagues can attribute, lost a chunk of my personality in the process). One of my proudest moments from 2023 was the remaining people that I started work with - all men - telling me individually that I had really stepped up and they had all noticed it.

But I had done so because I had no choice; I had arrived in a situation where my support network were no longer there and I was suddenly sat in meetings where football analogies became commonplace, and there was no longer a 'censorship' surrounding what was discussed at lunch. I knew I worked in a male-dominated industry, and I knew what the stereotypes of that were: this was not that, but it had the potential, for the first time, to become that.

On a holiday, some point after this, I read a book called The Authority Gap. The author, Mary Ann Sieghart , discusses promotions. Women managers will promote men and women evenly (a 50/50 split); male managers will promote men 80% of the time (so an 80/20 split). The main reason for this, she says, is community: where men will have large social groups that includes men across the spectrum of the social 'Hierarchy', women will have one or two close friends that are at a similar level to them. The connotations of this being that where men have connections they can go to for advice, tips, interview prep, or even the benefit of knowing the person beforehand, women, typically, do not. This struck a chord for me: women do not need to just shout about the problems we face in the workplace, we need to change how we communicate with one another and to create a community.

The characteristics that are second nature to men often have to be formalized for women to receive the same benefits: joining networking groups, asking for a mentor, starting a woman's group. Doing these things must be a conscious decision. It is not a coincidence that this newsletter's first edition takes place after I have - consciously - reflected on 2023.

looking forwards

As we begin 2024, with resolutions and promises to ourselves that may be kept or may be broken, my main resolution is to be conscious. I have grand aspirations for this newsletter, but it would not do to sit around and just wait for them to arrive. Our first edition, themed fittingly around resolutions, contains several interviews conducted with female members of talent teams. These are women that are constantly fighting an uphill battle against unconscious bias to hire more women, whilst simultaneously trying to answer the question from (mostly, if not exclusively, male) senior leadership of 'why do we not have enough women working for us?' or 'why do female candidates not want to work for us?'.

My hope is that no woman has the feeling of isolation that can come from working in a male-dominated industry; not because she is not friends with any of the men she works with, but because they could have no hope in understanding what that feels like. That to step up would not mean she feels she has to sacrifice a part of her individuality. That stepping up the ladder doesn't mean she has to lose the connections or relationships she has made on the rung below. But these things take time. Anticipating change without reflecting means that change will never come. ?

I hope that you find this newsletter, in some way, useful. It cannot hold all the answers, or even ask all the questions: that is not its purpose. The purpose of this newsletter is to foster an environment in which conversations surrounding women and how we are treated in male-dominated industries can thrive. The aim is to create the platform through which the answers will be found, through asking enough of the questions that we can have an impact. Over this year, I will be speaking with CEOs, Founders, Co-Founders, VCs, leaders and Individual Contributors - simply, women - across the weird and wonderful spectrum of tech. We are hoping to create a community full of women who are looking to support other women.

To help create, ultimately, parity.

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