I recently read an article by Sarah John from Boss Brewing , saying that she would no longer be attending women-only events; that she felt they did more harm than good in our pursuit of equality as a gender.
Unsurprisingly, things got interesting over on LinkedIn, with a good number of people disagreeing, and a decent amount of people agreeing absolutely with her stance. I read the article several times, understanding where she was coming from - but also thinking that somewhere along the line a point has been missed.
Sarah is absolutely right in saying that the ultimate in gender equality is when we don’t have to talk about gender at all. The problem is, we’re a long way off that - and to get there will involve positive action to drive cultural and societal change.
So why do I think that women-only events and awards are still so important?
I guess my response lies in what happens when we don’t have these sorts of events.
In late 2018, I was invited to the Lord’s Taverner’s lunch in Cardiff. My host, a law firm who we had been doing business with, greeted me at the door and said: “Well, it appears that everyone else forgot to invite women”.
I looked around the room and sure enough, all I saw everywhere was a sea of men in blue and grey suits. If I was to have a punt, I’d say that I was one of about 15 women in the entire room of over 100 people.
Did everyone else deliberately not invite women to their tables? Of course not. But when we decide who to invite along to things, we tend to pick people who are a lot like ourselves. And when the majority of C-suites and board rooms remain male-dominated, events end up being, accidentally, almost male-only. I also tackled this issue in a recent article I wrote where I questioned how inclusive the good old corporate golf day is.
The best person for the job?
An argument I often hear against positive action is that it should always just be the ‘best person for the job’, or the myth of meritocracy - the idea that if you are just good enough, then you’ll get the opportunity.
But that isn’t true.
Up until the 1970s, there were almost no female musicians in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. And then things started to change. Why? Did women suddenly become better musicians? Nope - they introduced blind auditions, where the hiring panel sat behind a screen and could not see the musician who was auditioning.
All of a sudden, when the auditioning panel could no longer see the musician, they were able to genuinely hire the best person for the job. By the 1980s, female hires made up 50% of new hires. Today, just over 45% of the orchestra is female.
I’m sure that previously, had you asked them, they’d have sworn that they always hired the best musicians. But this proves otherwise. Even where people genuinely believe they are dealing with meritocracy, subconscious biases can slip in and derail things.
The Rose Review into Female Entrepreneurship shows us that only 1% of UK venture capital funding goes to all-female teams and just 4% of deals. Why? If we are to believe those that say that it should always be ‘the best person for the job’, are we really only saying that 1% of women cut the mustard?
Or, just like at the Lord’s Taverners lunch, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, are the (very fallible) humans in venture capital funds naturally leaning towards businesses that look and feel a lot like themselves? After all, only 13% of senior people on UK investment teams are women, and almost half (48%) of investment teams have no women at all.
If we are to change those, frankly horrifying, statistics then we need to take positive action - and one of the places we can do that is by giving women a platform. And that means women-only events that not only invite women into the room, but let them shine.
Women can network with other women, who will invite them into rooms where perhaps until recently, they had been the only woman. And so on and so on. It’s not about excluding men, it’s about women opening doors for each other.
Representation is everything
Representation also plays a large part in why it’s still important to shine a light on female role models.
Did you know that when men are asked to think of a person, 80% of the time they will picture a man? That there are significantly more male than female protagonists in children’s books? Or that when asked to draw a scientist, 73% of children will draw a male? (Granted, that figure has improved from the original studies performed decades ago where 99.4% of children drew a male - yay progress!).
When we can see it, we can be it. If children or young women have never seen a successful female entrepreneur, then it becomes that much harder to imagine becoming one. If we want women to have access to VC funds at the same rate as their male counterparts, then we need to take positive action to get representation in the rooms where those decisions are made.
What happens when you have a room full of ‘best person for the job’ that lacks diversity? Well, ask Apple who managed to release their first version of Apple Health without a period tracker on it - a feature that half their users would use. The original release of Apple Health was touted as allowing users to track everything - from calories to electrodermal activity to heart rate to blood alcohol content to respiratory rate, even through to your daily intake of chromium. But your menstrual cycle? That had somehow been forgotten.
Louder for those at the back - put women in the room!
Gender-specific Issues
Female-only networking is vital in allowing women to work through some of the issues that face specifically them, in a safe environment.
Angela De Souza, who runs the Women’s Business Club said: “We tackle the issues that women face and offer support, we help women grow in confidence and fight imposter syndrome and we offer practical training and support. This is all centered around how women network and do business.
"Women need a safe space to explore various business and personal challenges amongst like-minded peers so that they are more confident and better equipped to work alongside their male counterparts.”
And it’s not just women that can benefit from a same-gender environment. Men too can greatly benefit from spaces where they are able to interact with their peers.
Dan Stanley, founder of BetterMen Coaching and facilitator of Men & Mountains, works only with men to help them overcome issues that are specific to them. The concept of masculinity, mental health and a work/life balance are all subjects that he tackles with his clients.
Dan said: “As a facilitator of a peer-to-peer community, namely, Men & Mountains, a monthly walking group with hundreds of male members from a narrow demographically range, I’m unequivocally in favour of peer groups.
"We find, that when there’s a commonality of experience and reasoning, it creates a high degree of psychological and emotional safety. This makes sharing our authentic selves more permissible and encourages us to be more expressive; a key factor in promoting positive personal wellbeing. So yes, I am absolutely an advocate of peer-to-peer events, groups and communities.”
Positive action is not discrimination
What’s important to remember is that events that are designed for just one group aren’t there to exclude other groups in the way that I think it’s often interpreted.
I’ve seen many a comment of “there’d be outrage if there was a Men in Business award”. Which seems to conveniently forget that for many generations, all awards were 'Men in Business' by default - because they were the only ones in the room.
Taking positive action is not about discriminating. It’s about creating opportunities for a group that is missing from the default.
Do I wish that we no longer had to talk about gender equality in business? Of course. My hope is that by the time the next generation of business owners come through, we’ll be much closer to that outcome.
But for now, there is still plenty of work to do - and we need women-only events to do it.
