Women Leading the Future

Today I launch my blog on women in leadership - Women leading the Future. In my work I engage with both men and women. I am, however, as a woman passionate about and committed to, enhancing women’s opportunities to make a difference in their workplaces and in society. I want this blog to generate a global conversation around the achievements – both large and small - of women leaders and those aspiring towards leadership. As well, I want us to share with one another the very specific challenges women face as they consider and attempt the journey along the road to leadership today. Through that dialogue I hope we will together find pro-active ways to meet those challenges.

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2007, I produced a newsletter on Women in Leadership. It was the response to the issues raised there that motivated me to start this blog as a way of continuing the conversation it initiated.

One thing I noted in the newsletter was the findings of Gillian Franklin, CEO of The Heat Group, when she was connected with some research as a member of the Committee for Economic Development Australia - 20% women want to stay at home and not work, 20% want to work and not have children and 60% of women want to work and have children. It’s the 60% that this blog is really focussed on because one of the greatest challenges to women moving into leadership is around the balancing of work and family issues.

There seem to be some common threads emerge from recent talks I’ve heard by successful women leaders. These are talks that are meant to inspire and motivate women to seize opportunities, to build their profile, to believe in themselves and to never doubt they can do whatever they set their mind to. They can be successful if they put in the work and these women all acknowledge that the work needed is significant. The reward, however, is supposed to be worth it. What is often not discovered until question time is that the price many of these women have paid is the end of relationships with their life partners. Some might ask whether that happened because the relationship did not receive enough attention. Others might ask if it was because their partners found it difficult to be with a highly successful woman. Does it need to be that way?

The other trend that emerges from these sessions is that many highly successful women who have gone to the top do not have children. During Innovation Week in May this year, I attended a talk from an internationally renowned, highly successful, top businesswoman. It was very motivating and innovative and actually offered lots of suggestions for achieving success and fulfilment on our leadership journey. Towards the end of question time someone asked her if she had children. When she said “no”, there was a deadly silence in the room. In fact, the question ended the session. The sense I had was that it was all irrelevant to many there. They wanted to know how you do all that and balance it with your family. Again, does it have to be that way? Can women only go to the top if they don’t have children?

Some research from New Zealand I looked at recently showed that women who were in key leadership positions, either had no children or had partners at home with the children. This is an emerging trend. It will be interesting to see whether men returning to work after being home with children face the same challenges women do when they attempt to return to work.