Sisters are doin’ it for themselves

March is women’s month. Starting with Mother’s Day on the 6th and International Women’s Day on the 8th – it means that we can look forward to enjoying and participating in lots of women events. On 3 March when I went to Brussels to speak at the launch of the Gender Balanced Map report. The mood of the event was upbeat and lively with none of the ‘woe are we’ hand wringing but sensible talk of why gender equality is the basis of good business for everyone. This is despite statistics that there are still so few women in charge.

My speech in Brussels was premised on my belief that gender balanced businesses are good for all businesses and I explained that was why I launched the Men in Childcare Group (London) four years ago. It was interesting listening to women running big and medium sized businesses as to why inclusion and equality make good sense. Heather Roy from Eurodiaconia made the point that the power of leadership starts with small children. She notes that girls should be encouraged to feel positive about leading and taking charge and not be reduced to the stereotype of “bossy”, “domineering” put downs which can have quite a deeply affecting impact. I was very familiar with this as at LEYF we distribute leadership at every level of the organisation because distributed leadership has a direct effect upon learning and organisational improvement. This starts with putting teaching and learning at the heart of the leadership to achieve what Dr. Ferre Laevers calls, “Leaderfull Children”.

Ultimately, the issues facing everyone across all industries represented at the conference remain similar; access to finance, recruitment, retention and as I was there – social impact! So it makes sense to create an approach that addresses these.

Afterwards I ran across a freezing Brussels boulevard with a group of ‘Women in Europe Lobby’ colleagues at the launch of their excellent report.

I was very pleased to connect with my European colleagues as I am keen that someone works with us to catalogue all the European social enterprise childcare organisations. This is in line with the Europe 2020 strategy, something I am keen to see happen. I want this data so we can have a bigger social enterprise conversation around its importance to childcare and in doing so, identify the common themes about: