Embracing My Inner ‘Woman in Business’

Friday 7 March 2025

By Gillian McKee, GIRAFFE Associates Ltd | Winner, Women in Business Best (Small) Green Business Award, 2024

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I avoided anything business-related with the tag ‘women’ or ‘women-only’, feeling no desire to set myself apart on the basis of my gender or seek any special dispensation for being a female.

I viewed it as a sign of weakness if I’m painfully honest. Having been lucky enough to never feel disadvantaged by my gender given the career path I’d chosen, I was quite happy to avoid what I saw as ‘special treatment’ for being a woman in business. I am also pathologically allergic to networking regardless of gender. If it was networking with cats and dogs I’d be first to put my name down, but with other humans? The very thought brings me out in a cold sweat!

All of this meant that I viewed organisations like Women in Business (WIB) as being very definitely in the ‘not for me’ category. So although my working life has been some 30+ years long, it was less than four years ago that I first joined up and even then, it was only because I wanted to do the Excel training on offer and it made more financial sense to do it as a member than not! It was probably only when Diversity Mark asked me to be the assessor for their new Gold Standard in 2022 that I started to see the value that all-women networks and gender-specific support were bringing to other women and began to be more open to it myself. Setting up my own business at the start of 2020 and missing the organisational support network I enjoyed for 22 years within Business in the Community NI, was possibly another factor motivating me to find new connections and I’m very glad I did.

So much so, that I sent a Christmas message to a few of the lovely people at WIB that I’d engaged with through blog writing, the Grow-it Programme and speaking on a panel at the Leadership Conference last year which said “I wasn't always a big fan of the idea of a women-only network, but I've really seen the value in the last year or two and have been inspired by what you do, how you innovate and how it really feels like a supportive community - I'm privileged to be a part of it.”

So of course the lovely Marguarita McNally called me out and said “that would make a good blog post” and here we are.

There are aspects of some women-only networks’ approach that really don’t work for me I have to say (though thankfully, these are not aspects adopted by WIB). I have no interest in spa experiences or mindfulness sessions, or rather I do, but not in a work context – I do yoga and the odd meditation session to relax and escape work for a while – the two are diametrically opposed in my mind. I want business support to be business-focused, not networking with pink prosecco for women and golf days for men. Surely we are much more than our gender stereotypes and when it comes to our businesses, male or female, we face similar challenges and seek similar support. Thankfully, WIB get this and the support and events they offer is business-focused and valuable as a result.

For example, I have benefitted greatly from the support of fellow female business owners on the Grow-it All Island programme this last four months or so. There’s definitely more of a ‘we’ mentality in sharing and helping each other out than I’ve experienced before in mixed settings where it tends to be more about ‘me’ and positioning than supporting each other. The importance of reciprocity is highlighted well in this Forbes article Why Women Need A Professional Network and that has been my experience with Women in Business so far.

The icing on the cake for me was probably at the Leadership Conference in November where the focus was on Leading with Purpose and I was asked to speak on a panel about my own work supporting companies with sustainability strategy, training and reporting. I’d never attended a WIB event before (other than the Awards last March, where I was truly stunned to win the Best (Small) Green Business Award) and I was blown away by the programme, the audience, the whole event really.

It was the quality of the speakers, their openness in sharing their challenges, experiences and learning and the generosity of spirit of everyone there that did it for me. The primary purpose was not to ‘sell’ anything or ‘be the best’, it was to share, learn and give each other a leg up, because let’s face it, there’s a hard enough world out there to contend with without us making it harder for other women to grow and shine.

I realise that my career has been one of privilege so far. One where my gender has not been a hindrance to progress and one where I truly don’t believe I have ever been overlooked in favour of a man, but I realise that many many women reading this will not have had that experience and many of you WILL have faced a struggle at some point in your career because of your gender.

Thanks to the recommendation of a very bright student who is coming to me for a short placement this summer, I am reading the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez which is opening my eyes to the inbuilt, unseen and often unintentional prejudice against women designed into our world. Its content makes it even clearer to me that we must connect, support each other and speak out to make the world a more fair, equitable and caring place than it currently is.

Organisations like Women in Business have an important role in bringing us together to do just that and providing a platform for women to realise the power of connection and use it for a better purpose. I’m proud to be a member and would encourage others to open their minds to networks like this, particularly if it doesn’t seem like your sort of thing. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Friday 7 March 2025