I have recently joined a wonderful new women’s club in the heart of London, the All Bright. Not only is it a gorgeous place to work and hold meetings, thanks to its 5-story Georgian townhouse base, but its ethos is collaboration and connection by bringing together amazing business women.
Now, more than ever, seems the time to champion the rise of the business woman. With more women than ever starting their own businesses (in part, sadly thanks to the lack of flexible working and pay equality in the job marketplace) the All Bright is a direct reaction to the need for a space, a voice and surroundings to empower and grow women leaders; and it’s no wonder that they have 2,000 names on the waiting list.
For me, I am definitely experiencing a positive sea change in empowering women in business. I was hugely privileged to be featured on the wonderful f:Entrepreneur’s Inspiring Stories series and to be part of their wonderful breakfast on International Women’s Day. The f:Entrepreneur campaign is hugely important as it highlights inspiring female business leaders across the UK through a number of events, content and story-telling. And I’m pleased to say they have a lot more planned for the rest of the year.
I am also thrilled to be hosting one of the wonderful Stella Creasy’s women’s leadership workshops next month. I attended one of Stella’s Circular Firing Up Squad sessions in which she empowers women and challenges how we perceive ourselves and how, at times, we don’t champion ourselves and each other enough.
There is, rightly, much noise around the equality and empowerment of women with a demand from many that enough is enough in terms of lack of equal pay and flexibility currently. This will be heightened further next week by the publishing of Gender Pay Gap Report which, by law, requires all UK companies with more than 250 staff to declare their percentage pay gap between men and women; it’s looking like it’s going to be depressing reading. But from its sadly shocking findings, there will hopefully be change – we can hope.
As a business woman, this seems to be the time to speak up, tell your story and be heard. The time to put your stake in the sand knowing that you’ll have a tribe of fellow amazing business women ready to cheer you on.
