Activating The Woman Effect

First written and posted in 2012, I still stand by this philosophy, and am updating it in 2024. Stay tuned!

This last year blogging here on Reclaiming Leadership has been fun and fascinating. Along the way I found myself speaking to and with wonderful, powerful women. And I’ve also been having fun blogging on women’s web sites, like Blogher, The Glass Hammer, Success in the City and Owning Pink. But I wanted to have a place of my own to speak to women about the trends I see from reading the leadership research that many women – heads down in their career – don’t get a chance to see. So I’m starting a new leadership and professional development blog and website for powerful, high-achieving women.

Here’s my opening play: The Woman Effect (1:48 min video).

For those who like THIS blog, rest assured that my plan is to continue blogging here on the subjects of leadership, corporate culture, change management and teambuilding.

Thanks for all of you who have friended, followed, commented, discussed and debated with me over the last year. I’ve never had so much professional fun in my life and it’s only getting better! I hope you’ll continue to follow my journey to understand and document The Woman Effect!

The original text of The Woman Effect Manifesta, 2012

The Woman Effect – A Manifesta

Women are powerful.

Women’s significant leadership presence[1] in any socio-economic system – a country, a government, an economy, a market, a province, a city, a town, a company, a non-profit, a family – helps that socio-economic unit become sustainable, profitable, productive, resilient and healthy.

It follows that if we seek these qualities in our institutions – to ensure their health and well-being (and sometimes, survival) – then we have a solution in front of us.[2] Bring a significant women’s leadership presence into our institutions and we provide them a key resource for health and wealth.

This is The Woman Effect: Women Create Positive Change When They Lead

To the extent that women’s participation in leading our institutions today lags a “significant” presence,[3] we are starving ourselves of a critical ingredient for survival, health and wealth.

Our modern world – and its social, technical and economic structures – has become interdependent to a degree unprecedented. Women are skilled at managing, negotiating and maintaining interdependence for the purpose of sustainability and growth. So are many men. As we sit on the threshold of the Twenty-First Century, our desire for prosperity demands that we explore new leadership models, which optimize this facility with interdependence. We cannot wait another day. Our world demands that we activate The Woman Effect now.

Activate The Woman Effect.

Since the turn of this new century, our research institutions and forward thinkers have recognized The Woman Effect and spoken of it in circles that talk about statistics. Papers have been written, conferences organized and programs developed analyzing the potential and challenges of retooling our socio-economic structures to adapt to this “new,” much-needed resource. But culture doesn’t change because analysis says it should. And women are not new to leadership.

The missing piece is the women themselves. For us to activate The Woman Effect in our institutions, we must activate it within ourselves. We must accept our unique value to the world as it is today. We must grow beyond the cultures that created an unsustainable world and establish new partnerships with the men and institutions that run the modern world. We must take on the responsibility for leading our institutions to create the world we want to live in and we want our children to live in.

The Woman Effect will activate in individual lives for those who take on more purpose and achieve meaningful results. It will look like promotions gained, entrepreneurial success achieved, elections won, personal choices made, families nurtured and the quiet battles of the soul laid to rest. We cannot wallow in what has yet to be achieved and we must celebrate every victory as though it is the decisive one. Because it is. Each time The Woman Effect is activated in a woman’s soul, our world becomes healthier.

You are The Woman Effect.

This is new territory for our world and for its people. There is no one who can instruct you, no one who can tell you exactly what your role is in activating The Woman Effect on a global, local or personal scale. And there doesn’t need to be. The research demonstrates it and you are The Woman Effect. It’s living inside you. No more excuses. No more waiting. You are powerful just as you are. InPower yourself and activate The Woman Effect within you– your life and your business – starting today.

Follow this call and join us. Together we will learn and fail and live and love and succeed spectacularly. Together we will activate The Woman Effect and our world will never be the same. Activate your own special power to change the world. Share this document and your own thoughts about it to help other women see and realize their highest potential.

[1] For organizations evaluated in multiple research studies (http://www.inpowerwomen.com/research/), The Woman Effect kicks in to bring these benefits to the social units studied at approximately 30% female participation in the organizations’ leadership.

[2] Women represent 51.5% of the U.S. populous (49.5% global) and 53% of the educated populous with some college education or more.

[3] Statistics show that in the Fortune 500, for example, women’s participation on boards of directors was approximately 15% in 2011.