Why women mean business

Tracey Pye,
BDO LLP





Why women mean business……………Women are becoming central to labour market solutions. Companies are urgently seeking policies to enable women to fulfil their potential (if they want it). Never before has there been such a shift in thinking. So what has happened?

Quite frankly, women today are the majority of the talent pool and make up to 80% of consumer purchases. A quarter of the UK’s 3.2 million self-employed workers are women. We are a majority and have a lot of influence (and persuasive) power. I am not saying that women are better, or that the future is all female – simply that it is not all-male.

Gone are the macho stereo types and the Thatcher syndrome years when women had to behave (and dress) like a man, we tried that and nobody (including males) liked the result. There is a new breed of women, ones who are confident and have an enormous amount of self belief in their vision of the future but yet women are able to remain true to their values and beliefs.

But can women now smash through the glass ceiling wearing their Jimmy Choos?  There are numerous success stories and you only have to be inspired by Natalie Massenet’s £350m sale of net-a-porter (she personally netting £50m) as one example of a women who demonstrated incredible self belief of having a vision that a £3500 Versace dress would be bought on-line without even  trying it on, Massenet has changed the way women shop – forever.

We may have to wait for a cavalry of progressive male CEO’s to ride to the rescue. Perhaps a younger generation of employees, interested in working in less hierarchical nonlinear ways, with fathers as well as mothers taking career breaks for children may clear the way, personally I don’t think that this would be such a bad thing ………… but in the meantime lets embrace our feminine qualities.


Tracey Pye is a Partner within the Manchester Business Restructuring practice. She has over fourteen years experience in advising stakeholders of underperforming and distressed businesses and has led many of firm's high profile national restructuring assignments in recent years. She was the speaker at the first pro.women discussion group on 20th July 'why women mean business'

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