At events recently, several successful males have said the following to me: 'I wish women would just stop with all this female founder and leadership and gender stuff and just get on with doing big things and building great businesses.'

They, clearly, completely miss the point.

Some women ARE out there building businesses and doing big things - but nowhere near the rate that males are. 

Some women ARE leading organisations, engaging in public life, policy shaping, and creating the architecture of the new economy.

But nowhere near the participation rate of men. 

And you don't have to look far to see that in the media, in business, in politics, in boardrooms, in startups, in tech and in STEM, women continue to be underrepresented, underpaid, under-voiced, undervalued and under-done - across industries, and across the world.

On top of that, women are predominantly carrying the invisible burden of care, for which there is no trading currency.

So we can choose to shut down the conversations or sugar up the stats, but the facts remain... the scales aren't balancing fast enough.

The gender gap is real.

Bias is entrenched.

And shifting legacy fixed mindsets is going to take multi-generational momentum.
 
Equality? Parity? We're nowhere near there yet. 

So we need to keep gender on the agenda, have the hard conversations, and then as a whole society create action to find a positive, workable solution to bring up the numbers and get the whole of humanity participating in the problem-solving of our age.

We need to get women and the girls after them to step up, lead, succeed, shape, design, learn, listen, speak, start, quest, wonder, run, code, write and win. Alongside men.

The conversations will only go away when the problem is solved, the gap has closed and we can ALL get on with doing big things and building TOGETHER.

@girledworld Building the next generation of female founders and leaders, one girl at a time. ✖️✖️