Empowering Female Leaders Of The Future Will Create A Better World

Empowering Female Leaders Of The Future

A Maria Scott article published by Forbes

As a mother of two girls, I care deeply about gender equality. Not just because I want to protect my daughters from the challenges faced by recent generations of women, but because my dream for them is a happier, kinder, more inclusive world.

In this piece, I want to share how we can all lean into supporting a diverse leadership for the future, which will ultimately result in a more prosperous, diverse and equitable world for all of us.

I will never forget when meeting a male investor in his glamourous office, he asked me if my motivation for launching my business was boredom.

This came at a time when both of my girls were under three years old. I was missing them desperately and my family was making huge sacrifices to allow me to leave my well-paid corporate job to launch TAINA.

No words can describe the emotions that went through me at that moment, and I must admit that I did cry on my way home from work that day, feeling embarrassed by my emotional fragility. At that moment, I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to ensure my girls would never experience any prejudice based on their gender.

The Business Case For Female Leadership

Female-led businesses build more value with less investment. The stats speak for themselves:

According to the European Central Bank, despite receiving less than half of the investment capital of their male peers, female-founded companies deliver twice as much revenue per dollar invested.

According to BCG: “Startups founded and cofounded by women are significantly better financial investments [than those founded by men]. For every dollar of funding, these startups generated 78 cents, while male-founded startups generated less than half that—just 31 cents.”

It is well known in the startup community that female founders tend to be incredibly disciplined with their resources; they are very scrappy and creative in making the same amount of funding going a long way.

What about the value of female leadership for large, established corporations? Again, the stats speak for themselves—on average, companies with the highest percentages of women board directors outperformed those with the lowest by 66%.

Broader Societal Benefits Of Female Leadership

Women leaders prioritize connection, collaboration and inclusion. They lead with love and compassion. This is not just at the leadership level but across the organization. Who is organizing all of our birthday gift collections, get-well cards and Christmas parties? Which of our colleagues do we go to for sympathy and advice at work? We all know that one wonderful female colleague who is there for us.

This is proven by data. Female leaders are twice as likely to drive diversity and inclusion, according to extensive research conducted over several years by McKinsey and LeanIn.org.

The Status Of Female Leadership

With these impressive stats, surely female founders should have no issues getting funded, and we should have a strong representation of women in leadership across the board. Sadly, it is quite the opposite.

Startups with all-female leadership received just 2% of all venture funding, with mixed-gender teams receiving just 10%.

Women across Northwestern Europe received a tiny fraction of venture capital raised in 2023, with all-female founding teams receiving 0.6% in France, 1% in the Nordic countries, 1.9% in Britain and 1.7% in Germany.

In more mature companies, thanks to their policies, the position is slightly better; however, percentages are still very low—in FTSE 100, only 9% of CEOs are women (only 7% in Europe).

What Are The Causes Of This Imbalance And What Can We All Do To Correct It?

Over a decade since Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, how is it possible that we have so few women in leadership roles, despite all the compelling advantages?

There are many systemic reasons for this. These vary by industry/region but, overall, in my experience the following “big four” tend to come up most frequently:

1. A lack of role models.

2. Challenges to accessing funding, networking and support.

3. Unconscious and conscious biases.

4. Challenges integrating caring for the family with the pressures of work.

As an entrepreneur, my bias is to focus on concrete actions that are within our control:

We can all share our learnings, make introductions and broadcast stories of successful women.

The integration of caring for the family with work is made more difficult by the stereotypes of what a good woman, mother, daughter or wife is. It is time we embraced a more open and fluid way of living that makes sense for each family concerned.

We can all make an effort to be aware and challenge our assumptions and biases.

I have been extremely blessed to have the support of some amazing women—and men—as my mentors and investors, and I very much hope to be able to give back the same to future generations.