Jacs Learns

I'm not sure what I'm learning about yet, but it's definitely something. In Progress. [See first post for the motive for this exercise in written self-indulgence]

[jacsgud]

Outbox Incubator: Week 1

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t want to write this article. I know deep down I do. But we are 40 Outbox Execs and Stemettes sitting on a train back from Birmingham to London, none of us have slept more than 50% of the acceptable amount for normal functioning and we’re recovering from fighting off a weekend of bro-coders with some old school Stemettes power. When I find myself in this kind of situation, let’s just say that writing doesn’t exactly flow out of these fingertips.

But when I think about all that has happened to leave these 40 girls in an exhausted mess, comfort eating and snoozing on the train… I realise that deep down I want to write about it a lot.

If I walk down the aisle of this train and look at the Outbox Execs, heads in books, fingers tapping away on phones and laptops, headphones firmly plugged in, I know that a whole lot more fills their minds now than it did a week ago. Gone is the anxiety of going away from home for weeks, and in its place is something new.  

They’ve listened to up to 20 hours of expert advice given by industry professionals who are at the top of their game in STEM or entrepreneurship. From co-collaboration, to how to network effectively, to VC funding, to how to start a socially good tech startup, to name a few. There’s reams of notes all stored centrally on our Outbox Wiki to show just how much valuable information the girls didn’t want to forget. They’ve got hearts that are brimming with a little more love, having met a whole group of new girls (all of whom had never met before) who have now become good friends. And, we hope, they’ve got a new perspective and a new sense of belonging, when it comes to finding their place in a world of start-ups and business that is still currently dominated by the male sex.

Again, more honesty – the Stemettes team are definitely feeling it after a week. Not because we’ve had to deal with problems or complications. Nor because we’re not used to getting by on this little sleep (we are very used to that). The reason we’re feeling it so much is because the girls we’ve met through Outbox Incubator have just not stopped going. Their energy is boundless, their questions are deeply probing, their enthusiasm bursts forth in overwhelming waves (and makes you wish you could be that enthusiastic person, you know, the one who is a little annoying in their constant enthusiasm), their appetites for learning are insatiable… and actually their appetites in general are never-ending too.

That means the Outbox House is constantly alive. Constantly buzzing. Constantly filled with finished plates of food. It also means that we, as Team Stemette, are rushed off of our feet trying to keep up with all the questions, energy and requests. Then getting our head around the pace at which these girls are developing is a whole other ball game. Let’s not go there quite yet.  

The pinnacle of this week found us at Young Rewired State’s Festival of Code 2015 in Birmingham. It’s a festival that brings together young coders from all across the UK, all creating products with tech to a particular brief (this year the products have to utilise open data). Five group presentations into the semi-finals and we’ve only seen all-boy teams go up to present. The Stemettes couldn’t have felt more proud of our Birmingham Outbox Execs at this point. They had disrupted any unplanned quietness with chants of “Outbox Incubator”. They had filled up the festival’s rooms with rows of girls where there would have been none. They had created app ideas which focused on social good, social need and women’s issues. And the Holler App missed out on the finals by one measly point. It’s very difficult being good sports, even as adults, in those moments…

Thinking about it, I’d honestly be completely content if we made the decision to pack up the Outbox Incubator house tonight. Our first cohort of 45 girls has exceeded all of our hopes and expectations and set the bar exceedingly high for the weeks to come in so many ways. Kind, loving, supportive, helpful, team-spirited, but also driven, motivated, competitive and focused. This magic mix has helped Holler app to be well on its way to seed funding and just in Week 1. The future for the girls in Outbox Incubator seems a rosy one, and there’s no way we’re shutting up shop until the 6 weeks are over.

[jacsgud]

"In a 2014 study of girls between the ages of four and seven, those who played with a Barbie doll—even Doctor Barbie—said that fewer occupations were open (paywall) to them, compared with boys. The girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head, on the other hand, identified nearly as many future career options available to themselves as boys."

Lego's female scientist set could inspire a generation of girls to become scientists

[jacsgud]

“Every man is, or hopes to be, an Idler.”

'The Idler', Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1758 

[jacsgud]

A girl's universe

[jacsgud]

[jacsgud]

What would you do with $50 million?

A 3 hour Stemettes strategy meeting, followed by a dinner into which a similar vein of conversation and thinking flowed, yielded one big lesson yesterday.

It's not like I've remained ignorant to the power of this idea that seems to be touted for every privileged middle class person (and probably the non-middle classed, but I'm talking from a perspective of experience) in this country to hear, perhaps in the hope that they will adopt it as their mantra. I've grown up like all the rest of the kids, listening to pop stars, watching actors, hearing from sports heroes, or from people whose lives are amazing stories of sheer determination and inner strength. They all tell us: "dream big"; if you want it enough, and work for it enough, you will get it. I've never believed it. 

Such a vague and expansive idea does tie in closely with a business strategy meeting, however - we weren't just sitting there with our eyes closed, and our little determined fists clenched, chanting "if we want it enough we will get it". It turns out that for organisations in the process of scaling up, such as the Stemettes, "thinking big" has immediate practical value; it allows you to determine larger goals; consider how you might need to operate at scale; be prepared for responding with agility to offers of investment; and put the spring in that step of yours. And those are just my limited thoughts on the matter. Facilitated by a wonderfully experienced social enterprise bod, we soon found that the Stemettes version of "thinking big" was asking ourselves "what would we do with $50 million?" (off the back of a huge women in STEM investment made by Google). 

As ridiculous an exercise as this seemed - it's not every day that a social enterprise or not-for-profit will land $50 mil - solid results seemed to come forward. Thinking of our $50 million goal soon had us fleshing out a diverse set of alternative revenue streams, which fed back into increasing the sustainability of the rest of the business. It had us fighting to ensure that through this exercise we stuck to pursuing our mission. But in so doing, it also allowed us to think about the breadth of our mission. It encourages those thoughts that are usually never touched on (unless you're Anne-Marie), because they were "things we could only have dreamed of"; so you don't dream about them in any meaningful way or in any real depth. Dreams are just dreams, right? And finally, it had us smiling - and excited. So many people dream of running their own business - I certainly did in the sense that I wanted freedom and creativity. If you can't have fun with it, then what's the point.

Perhaps the thinking around this is the lesson in itself. We need to allow ourselves that indulgence of thought. Which actually may not even be as indulgent as one might think. Our attitudes and the way we think are huge influencers in our lives, our achievements, determining our priorities and much more. But there's still part of me that wants to say that my understanding of the real value of "dreaming big" will only really come into being in the (positive) outcome.

"Just because you dream something up Anne-Marie, doesn't mean we can act on every one of those dreams; it doesn't work like that".

Anne-Marie just looked at me, eyebrow slightly raised. That was enough for me to say to myself "we shall see". I'm generally a skeptical person; but I'm not skeptical when it comes to the Stemettes and the Anne-Marie effect. 

[abundance-mine]

You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.

Eliezer Yudkowsky (via abundance-mine)

[jacsgud]

"Networking is essentially about making friends and being nice to people. You don't need to be a power-hungry empire builder, smooth-talking salesperson, or exuberant 'people person' to enjoy it" - Zoe Cunningham

http://www.techtalkfest.com/

[anaisnin-blog-blog]

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.

(via anaisnin)

[jacsgud]

Bringing people on your journey

People joining us on our journey is absolutely crucial to the success of the Stemettes. We need to  inform  people of the problem, convince them that it needs solving and we can do that, find and provide ways to engage with them, and then motivate them to carry on living our vision. This is how I think we successfully retain hundreds of core followers, and thousands of wider followers. Luckily for us, part of the ease and speed with which this has happened is because there are so many women who have experienced discrimination in STEM study and careers and suffered in silence, swept it under the rug or accepted it as the norm - or a combination of all three. The Stemettes simply allowed them to be "out and proud" - it's a mouth piece for so many STEM-talented women, it elicits emotional responses of alienation in the past, but hope for the future, and a chance to take a different path for today's girls.

But bringing people along on your journey is much more than accidental. It may happen fairly organically, or without noticing, but there will be a reason behind it. Whether it's because you have a certain company culture, a new and innovative way of doing things, or because you are proactive in spreading your message. You may be good at it, it may come naturally, but you still need to help people along with you - be that internally (e.g. employees) or externally (e.g. clients).

There must be many a way to achieve this. Many a way which I won't allow myself to go into, for fear of breaking tumblr with all my millions of words. But, as the Stemettes are a huge source of inspiration for me, so too is On Purpose, the social enterprise leadership programme I'm currently on. Because they've swept me up along with them. It was at a Friday afternoon training session that I suddenly realised a huge part of why I felt so wrapped up in the programme. This was as Kate, one of the very small core leadership team, gave us some insights into some of the big changes for On Purpose and some of the exciting developments that are to affect its future. She did this with, what felt like, a commitment to being as transparent as possible. When asking about the motivations, the challenges and some of the nuances of these changes for On Purpose, my cohort was met with honest, straight-forward answers that seemed to have no other agenda but to bring us closer to what has been happening at the core of the programme.

At its most basic level, how did that make me feel? I felt privileged. And appreciative of that privilege. There could easily be a split between the Associates (those currently on the programme) and the leadership team; we're not running the company after all, and these changes of which Kate talked did not affect our experience of On Purpose now, and will not affect us throughout the duration of the year-long programme. But what it did do, at least for me, was enrich that experience. I was engaged, interested, inquisitive, and overall I felt valued and (cue embarrassing hyperbole, but it's the truth!) really rather honoured. It didn't matter that I was being told as one small part of a cohort of 15, and as a matter of due course (albeit one that Kate is vehement that On Purpose stick to where possible), I still felt that blasted "h" word.

I suppose part of this fairly strong reaction is because I have always felt more loyalty towards On Purpose than your average job (if I can even call it that) from the very beginning. I know that I can form quite strong emotional connections to people and causes - if that "chemistry" is there - but even so, I have always cared about On Purpose. Maybe because I think the cause is fantastic, and the leadership team genuine and so totally committed to their mission and to developing and supporting their Associates and Fellows. I feel like an individual. And because, if I'm honest, they feel a little like saviours to me (so many hyperbole!); they came along at a time of near-on despair for me and seemed to tick almost every box in a sort of "can this be real?" way. It was like an oasis in a maelstrom of EscapeTheCity.com mediocrity. I know I care; if the result of this round of interviews for the next cohort had yielded a disappointing talent pool, from which to recruit the new cohort, I would have felt very upset and disappointed for the programme. I would have worried; I would have wanted to think about how we could fix that.

And there it is, I suppose - that "we". If you break down the barriers and let people in, and they like what they see, they will follow. Moreover, they will follow from a place that isn't out of self-interest, but because perhaps they see something that has captivated them - be that the company's values, the mission, or the way the company does business - and they want to be a part of that.

To bring people along on your journey, you need to frame what you do with "we" and "ours", not "them and us". In fact, coincidentally, I may have mentioned that before...

[goodgeology]

I am a Difficult Woman descended from a long line of Difficult Women. Shit, I am a GMO Difficult-Woman bred specifically to thrive through four-score and ten years of postmodern misogynistic bullshit.

—Hope motherfucking Jahren (via goodgeology)

[jacsgud]

Womb with a View

It's been a long old time since I've thought about my womb. And that's not to say that I ever let it occupy my thoughts particularly, nor would it be responsible for the beads of sweat on my forehead when I awoke with a start in the night. But I suppose I have thought about it in the past; perhaps during a period, or when I was worried about getting pregnant - ladies things, as a womb is just that - it's a lady's thing. It's my lady's thing and it's a large part of what defines me as a female. We just can't get enough of reproductive organs, us women.

Since I've stopped sleeping with men, and since all lady's menstrual stuff is not all over the place as it has been, I realise I've completely neglected my womb. It's kind of useless at the moment. Not only do I not think about it, the fertile and virile female organ that sits within me (taking up lots of space and doing very little at the moment), but I don't even worry or dislike or get annoyed by it. She can't surprise me in the morning with news of a baby. She can't upset me by failing time after time to bring the new life into my own life that I am desperate for. I don't want a child at the moment, nor do I have any chance of having one as I haven't seen a single sperm in a very long time - I couldn't ask for a better set of coinciding circumstances.

But lots of women do feel these kind of negative, fearful reactions towards their womb. These feelings mix and boil down to a feeling of guilt. Guilt for feeling like their womb is a painful nuisance, an inconvenience, not giving them what they want, giving them more than they want, and many will try and ignore it to blank out the negativity we feel. I would never have guessed that a woman's womb could be a source of guilt, nor had I need to do so in the end; I attended a Connecting with My Womb two hour workshop at Wildheart, down in East Sussex (wonderful little hippy thing, from one non-hippy to another). I heard these thoughts directly from a group of women; some had miscarriages, some were desperate for another child, some had abortions, some had painful periods, some just didn't ever think or care about theirs. Whatever - guilt brought them all together. Was there a sense of being enslaved to our ability to procreate? Where we were neglecting that function, did we feel like we owed our womb something?

When we meditated (read: when Jacs fell asleep and had to be woken by Steph) and visualised our womb, a strange image eventually came to my mind. At first nothing (I was asleep), but then I saw a field of yellow wheat. A landscape which straddled the land of the fertile and the land of the barren; wheat obviously must grow on fertile land, but it seems so dry and coarse to me, almost sun-scorched, so faded in colour, that I feel like it sits on the boundary between life and death. Could a few too many rays of sunshine, or too few drops of water one day signal its end?

And that's how I felt about my womb.

It's funny because - once I began to think about it - I realised that part of the devaluing of my womb, for me, has come through the presence of other women and other wombs in my life. By having my romantic relationships with women, I am potentially robbing my womb of its one function; it may not be me in the partnership who carries a child, if I ever do get a point in my life where I want children. Not only that but the womb does not become a possible destination for the products of sex; it is completely removed from the sexual process, and not by contraception. Has it become distanced fro the sexual process or has sex replaced its reproductive function; sexual intercourse which cannot produce offspring is thus pushing out the womb and its reproductive process. Sex is just sex for sex's sake. This sounds silly but I saw my womb either as angry, confused or lost. I've always believed in female solidarity for the most part, but is the close presence of another womb a threat potentially?

It's very clear that today women are not at the mercy of their wombs as they once were; we now have the control, as much as we want to. Contraception, abortions etc. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a slight emotional hold that a woman's womb can have over her; all it took for me to realise was a yurt full of meditating women talking of feelings that all equated to guilt, while some wept quietly and stumbled over their sorrow-laced words. 

[jacsgud]

Urm... Hi, I'm Your (Mental) Mentor

*This was written pre-April - no idea if you can change the chronological order of posts"

The Stemettes are starting a new phase of their operations - and, if I'm correct, it's all kicked off a lot quicker than we expected. The planning and meeting stage at least. It remains to be seen whether or not we are able to get the financial backers, the right girls and roll it out for the beginning of next year (realistic but optimistic estimate). So far we have pin-pointed 3 girls from Dublin who discovered a bacteria that, when injected into seeds, speeds up the germination process; 6 girls from a school in Ilford, London, who have 3D printed an insect house; and a 15 year old from Hertfordshire who has started a music blog. And that next step is "incubating". Taking the girls, their projects and growing and developing them until they are packaged up as wonderful little commercial ventures.

This got me thinking. I have a couple of girls I have "picked up" along the way since volunteering and working at the Stemettes. It seems to happen organically - I get on with the girls, don't take myself or what I'm doing too seriously, and we tend to end up having a laugh. From 6 year olds up to 18 year olds, we're all just bezzering away together at Stemettes events! There was Nia from the Stemettes launch, and Laurelle - who I have known for a year now - who asked me to be her mentor last Saturday at the London panel. I have one girl in particular who I met at a Little Miss Geek school "takeover", where we became "besties" and I ended up nominating her to win a Dell XPS, which she did indeed take to her final period of the day with her. We clicked, at least I thought, and I was a little sad when the communication all but fizzled out. Zea, 15 years old.

I'm a great believer in the power of mentors. I think if I had had one at various stages of my life, things wouldn't necessarily have gone better, but I would have made better decisions, handled situations better and just been happier and more confident in what I was doing. I probably would be exactly where I am now with less stress or more time for reflection along the way. The time for this, more than any other, would have been while I worked as a management consultant at a global technology consulting company. I was unhappy and lost and feeling very unmotivated. As a result, I screwed it up.

I thought that Zea would be the perfect candidate for some kind of mentoring relationship and later on incubating her and her idea, if I have the time and energy, connections and money. She's a great little kid with tons of passion and enthusiasm (not in that saccharine sweet way), a dry sense of humour (my favourite), years beyond her age (we're mentally very similar), a love for all things geeky and techy, knows how to commit (she dances all the time) and what is more, she's been developing her own mobile app. Sounds perfect to me. So I got on the blower (well, I got on the twitter, asked for her email address, got on the email, asked for her mobile number and then....).

So, briefly I wanted to think about what makes a good mentor? I don't want this to be a wasted, half-hearted, flash-in-the-pan thing where we hung out, drank milkshakes, went to a couple of events, wrote some bits and pieces on paper and I talked to her about her love life. I want this to make a change. Be that to actually incubate an idea finally (the ultimate goal) or just to build her confidence, give her some direction and be a friendly face she can come to when someone emails her and she isn't sure what to respond, or when she's deciding which university to go to.

I think I'm going to leave it at that for now. I didn't say I wanted to think out loud in this blog post. I want to think in my head and then onto a piece of paper. And then I'll return.

[jacsgud]

**Be the change that makes the difference**

Huge girl crush recently. If you're a girl, you probably know what a 'girl crush' is, even if you don't like to call it that. It's when you meet a woman, she needn't be attractive, but for all the other reasons that make a person insanely attractive, you want to be with them in some capacity (friend, best friend, bff, gardener, muse etc.). This can often blur into considering whether you really fancy them and just want a sexual and romantic relationship with them, straight or gay. Or sometimes you just want to _be _that woman. No one quite knows which it is, but we just get that tingling in the chest and excitedness that can be nothing other than a crush.

On Tuesday of last week, I met Lucy Anne Holmes, brains behind and founder of No More Page Three - the campaign that has taken the UK by storm and is convincing women and men alike that it's just not appropriate, respectful or just to have women with their knockers out when you open a newspaper. Not in the Sun, not in the Daily Star, even should they start it in The Times, not in there (but would the ladies be wearing pearls and have a Barbour jacket brushing a nipple? Maybe they'd even be at a Polo match, horses galloping in the background). No More Page Three, simple as that.

I'm a sucker for any kind of female empowerment campaign, project or action. Nothing too hugely militant though (Mum's worried I'm evolving into Emeline Pankhurst - she's issued a restraining order of 10m between any horse and I). And I can't say that I am _that _firmly against page 3; I think there are more important things in life that we need to sort out, such as Female Genital Mutilation, but things like that are going to take a lot longer, challenging cultural and religious values that - however much we research - we still know very little about. The NMP3 campaign could be a much quicker win, and Lucy is confident we'll see Page 3 topless modelling banned within the next year. But even if it isn't top of the agenda, it is not something that I want my kids to grow up seeing or knowing about (I can't see myself starting to buy the Sun in married life), thinking that that is woman's place. I couldn't give a toss that women choose to earn their money this way, or that men will find joy in ogling at them. We used to perve away in form time in about Year 8, girls and boys. But the very fact that Lucy had started this campaign made me swoon. She was just so cool. And she was hugely down to earth to boot. Starstruck, I was.

But I'm not here to talk about the campaign, oddly enough. Nor how much I am crushing on Lucy, even more oddly. But it was something that Lucy said on Tuesday in Portcullis House, Westminster, that made my jaw drop to the floor more than it already was. She said "I was forever saying 'that's really important, someone ought to do something about that'. And then I realised that there was no reason that _I _couldn't be that someone". And thus NMP3 was born. Only a little while earlier, Dan, the brains behind #RiotCleanup and general twitter activist and social mobiliser, told us that anyone can incite action, you just need a compelling cause and a good hashtag. And suddenly I thought - if I want to change something, or start something, I can bloody well do that. You don't need to be Caitlin Moran to do that (though it helps - everything she touches turns to....Skittles).

So that's it really. I would imagine one might expect the revealing of my grand master plan now; I don't have one. Or some pledge that I will be that "someone" - if I can I will, but if I don't have an idea worthy of it, I'm not going to try. So this is a "tbc" kind of blog post. Mostly to relieve me of the heavy weight of my oh-so-secret girl crush (although I jumped all the way back to the tube with Team Yimby exclaiming "girl crush" over and over). Then to follow that up with a boast: Lucy Anne Holmes, founder of No More Page Three, asked ME for MY business card. And we've tweeted.

#girlcrush

[jacsgud]

"A Guide to Networking" by A Complete Networking Novice

If you'd asked me three years ago if I liked or valued networking, you would have got a resounding no. Two years ago, the same. One year ago. And even up until Christmas last year really. But let's take it back to the mid-way point, about a year and a half ago. I finally understood the the damn "n" word was essential when I had initially been quite (read: very) resistant to it, all it stood for an encompassed. To put it mildly. I was trying it out only within Accenture for the most part and it was getting me nowhere. Not to mention that I felt like a smarmy git who was slowly manipulating her way to a good project or new sponsor (if I had ever been successful). To me, at that point, networking was a waste of time. Now - having had some wonderful, uplifting and positive experiences networking - I wonder why.

People at Accenture think they know networking. They think that it defines their careers. They think it gets them to where they want to be, and thus leads to happiness. They think that they are the dons of networking - as least the business tries to encourage that mentality, I found. They also think that is is crucial to their success. A ho ho ho. It's not, I argue. Nor is it real networking, I argue. It is internal networking. Aside from it being hugely dull, it is also all laid out on a plate (perhaps that's why it is dull) just an @accenture.com email away. Easy peasy! Attend the same events, use the same format amidst too many sips of alcohol. But the way I see it - you could easily see huge success in your career at Accenture without networking. Maybe I'm naive, but there it is.

Now let's take "external networking". Because, believe it or not Accenturites, that's what everyone else does. And my oh my it's a bigger beast to battle. It demands proactivity and hard work - by attending the right events and singling out the right people. But sometimes you have to rock up to seemingly useless events; not all events in the real world are segregated by industry or team, with an Outlook list of who is and isn't invited. Think of it as the real world and the way you meet people: in a bar, on the street, at a cafe, at a talk - opportunities could come from anywhere. 

Once you've tracked down the event and stumbled across the person, it's onto the selling. You are selling yourself, your company or organisation and your dreams, desires and goals. Not just your role, your interest within the business and your position within the hierarchy. But then again, sometimes it's as simple as finding a personality match or something you have in common. But either way, once the sales pitch has been made and have established your USP, you have to maintain contact, engagement and interest. I believe that fortunately you are likely to be more interested in a potential relationship a person that you just happened upon from another organisation than another brain washed corporate bod who is two levels below you and is slowly being taught to think just like you. There is no mutual benefit to be found in the latter, for the most part (slave labour anyone?), but plenty in the first. The great thing about "external networking" is that someone 20 years younger than you can still be a great connection and teach you things. And wonderful, random but creative partnerships can be made.

Since I realised this, I've become a good and proactive network, often willing to put the effort in. My particular strengths, I think, are the "first impression 2 minutes" and maintaining contact (/stalker), which I think many people struggle with. I can feel another blog post coming on.....

[jacsgud]

"I'm not a feminist, but..."

Let's get the Science out of the way first:

  feminism (noun):the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. feminist (noun): a person who supports feminism.

  It's fairly common, though still unfathomable, to hear a woman say "I'm not a feminist, but... I still want us to get equal pay, have the same opportunities, be able to become CEOs, be treated the same in society etc. etc (see picture above). In other words, I wouldn't label myself a "feminist", but I do stand for everything that feminism is i.e. equality between the sexes. And yes, we've all heard it many a time before - it's because us feminists don't wear bras, have tons of pubic hair, and will probably maul you in public or something (just so much pent up aggression).

  But last week, I got a bit of a shock. I attended a Women in Leadership talk, put on my On Purpose (my employers). A very successful lady who had achieved much, and all off her own back as well as in the face of adversity and discrimination, came in to speak to us on the topic. All was well, and then she uttered "I'm not a feminist". I stuck my hand up and waited for her to come to me: "Just out of interest, why do you say you're not a feminist?", to which she replied "because I don't believe that women should be all powerful and better than men". Right, I thought - "but you still believe in equality for women", thinking I'd thrown the obvious but never-failing clincher when it comes to women (hoping to then follow up with the "well, that's what a feminist is" knock-out - 1 more feminist in the world, hurrah). Her answer - "no, I wouldn't say I do believe in women's equality - I don't think all women should be equal to men, just because; I think it should be those women who want it and work for it".

  Ba-duh. Urm... [silence].

  Dumbfounded.

  I'm sure if I hadn't been reeling from the shock quite so, or had a quicker mind that evening, I might have been able to bring this back round and say that on a basic, fundamental level she believe in equality in the sense that all women should have the opportunity or potential to achieve the same as men, without societal restrictions. But I didn't. I didn't even manage to figure out a mental connection of that type. As such, I...was...livid. Toes scrunched up in my converse, fingers curled under the underside of my chair, eyes fixed, staring directly ahead, breathing coming in long controlled exhalations, so worried I was that I was going to just blow. Shortly afterwards, I got a message from my friend - "Enjoying this then, Jacs?".

She wasn't even going on a superficial level - bra burning etc. She was intelligent enough to link it to the motivation and ideology behind it, and say she didn't align herself with that. I don't even have a point to make really. Apart from to say that few things fuck me off more than a woman saying she's not a feminist (for whatever reason). Usually it's nice to be able to prove them wrong, but in this case I couldn't, as she seemed to have thought it through - albeit to ridiculous effect. I suppose the broader question, which I haven't had the hours of sleep to answer tonight, is - how do we get women to self-identify as feminists, as soon as they feel that flicker of desire for equality for women (and to note that no desire to put a match to their bra accompanies it)? 

  Certainly there's all this chat about rebranding feminism at the moment. And I really do believe this has been done with success at many points - a woman like Caroline Criado-Perez campaigning for a female on the new banknotes; the No More Page 3 campaign; Pussy Riot (ok, so perhaps a little more angry lesbian extremism, but that's my bag, obviously); blogs and movements like Everyday Sexism and Vagenda. There are a raft of "feminist" movements today, of which most women will find at least one idea to side with. It's tangible stuff (althoughsymbolic in some cases).

   someone said they didn't believe in equal rights for homosexuals, they'd be called homophobic. And imagine how much strange that would be if it was a gay person rejecting the movement that promoted their own equal rights. So, to oversimplify this in a rather crude way - reject feminism and you're more or less inflicting sexism on yourself and your fellow women. Ouchies.

[jacsgud]

How to create more young female entrepreneurs

*Disclosure* This is my article that was published on the Guardian Women in Leadership website yesterday.

From a young age, boys run the majority of startups. Why is this? And how do we get more women in leadership roles?

A good idea is always a good idea, whenever or however that idea may come about. At the EU Commission's Innovation Convention 2014, I watched Anne-Marie Imafidon, founder of the Stemettes project and just 24 years old, tell a room full of mature people with great confidence: "I do things when I want; I don't wait for the government, or teachers or my parents to give me permission. I just do it."

I myself have always been very much a product of the system: start school aged four, take various national public exams at the right time, go to university at 18, graduate on time and begin work as appropriate. But Imafidon wasn't content with these imposed barriers. She ended up being the youngest girl in the UK to get a computer science degree at just 11 years of age, and the youngest woman to graduate from Oxford with a masters at the age of 20.

In the Stemettes she has found something she is passionate about and has forged ahead with it, taking it to funders, corporates and international conventions, amidst cries of "you'll never do it, you're still working full time in an investment bank". As it turns out, she has done it: she's done what she wanted, in the way she wanted, when she wanted.

Operating outside of the system has some benefits. We hear tales of amazing child prodigies that started their first tech startup aged 12 and now own a fantastic studio flat just a stone's throw away from Silicon Valley. They are the kids that stayed indoors, playing shoot-em-ups and strategy games on the PlayStation, creating their own PC games and incubating great ideas in those adolescent minds of theirs.

Notice the imagery, in many ways it's very much male in nature. Meanwhile, girls are being sociable, flirting, going out. If they're not, then they're reading books and doing other things that typically don't involve coding and game-making. But not Imafidon; she was taking apart and reassembling her dad's VCR as soon as she had the hand-eye-coordination to do so. And why not?

It is a fact that very young entrepreneurs (those under the age of 16 running startups) are exclusively male, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The majority of girls are not thinking in the same way as boys: how can I become an entrepreneur and push this idea out to the masses?

There are some girls out there who are challenging this trend. At the EU Innovation Convention we met a group of girls who had created an amazing chemical which speeds up the germination process for flowers and plants. "We've been pushed to think outside of the box," said one of them, "but girls need to stay outside the box and think, what next?"

It's true. So far, the girls seem to have got a pat on the back for winning a great competition, and told they will do "ever so well" in their GCSEs. If it weren't for the support they were getting, they wouldn't know where to go next.

Does this mean that more boys are born with this cut-throat business shrewdness? Or does a startup, STEM or otherwise, just not fit with the typical young female ideal? I think the latter. The male, spotty teenage, computer gaming, "can't get a girl" image is still strongly associated with the young startup scene. An image change is certainly needed, but it's hard when the Mark Zuckerbergs and Jack Dorseys are the ones that dominate the press. The women, such as Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer and Angela Ahrendts, tend to be older and not of the startup variety.

Little Miss Geek says it well: the next Mark Zuckerberg could be a woman. True, but not if the image barrier remains. This image barrier is worst in STEM; the stereotypes are so deeply ingrained that many girls automatically assume that STEM is not for them. They are put off even learning to code or becoming a mechanical engineer, let alone going it alone as a young entrepreneur.

This is what the Stemettes challenges. Through a single interaction with the Stemettes, girls see that there are successful, engaging, feminine ladies standing before them with their own tech startup or revolutionary research paper. Later, when they have created a mobile app in just one day, or coded up their own website in two days at a hackathon, they realise that talent isn't the issue. Imafidon wants to take this further by singling out those girls who have a fantastic idea and then connecting them with the right people, offering them mentoring and advice.

It's a shame that many girls need this kind of encouragement to have the confidence to become young entrepreneurs. It must be a hugely daunting concept, but if we continue to instil the idea that you can do what you want, when you want, because you want to, then perhaps in the future there will be no need to discuss the lack of women in leadership.