Life
For me, it’s personal. As a parent of a severely dyslexic son, time and again I have experienced services, notably in education, that were actively resistant to the potential of technology. To give a very small example as an illustration, my son’s school wouldn’t let him use his mobile phone in the classroom. Instead of allowing him to photograph the white board, say, to capture the homework task, they opted to pay for a teaching assistant to be in class to take notes for dyslexic learners. Technology could have empowered learners and nurtured skills for independence. Instead, it was resisted, and students’ needs were stigmatised.
Pretty much everyone will have mental health challenges at some point in their life – however, not everyone has access to mental healthcare. There simply aren’t enough therapists to go around. Even among those with access, finding your way to the right services for your needs at the right moment is a ‘friction-full’ experience. It is a frustrating process for many and is often overly complex. In the private domain, it’s likely to involve a stress-provoking search through therapist websites. Friends call me to ask how to do it. Or have me do it for them. It’s a very messy terrain for people who aren’t familiar with how it works.
Female entrepreneurship is a wonderful thing. Gender diversity at the top trickles down, increasing the representation of women in senior roles more widely. Diversity in general aids business performance, boosting the economy in the process. Plus, we need women at the helm of businesses to create products and services that answer to the needs of the female half of our population. So why, given all these benefits of female entrepreneurship, did I feel a little uneasy when I heard that there’s been a significant rise in the number of female founders?
















