The Inspiring Fifty UK awards, hosted by accelerateHER, has announced the 50 trailblazing winners of this year’s contest. With over 500 entries received the calibre of entrants was higher than ever with women from the world’s biggest tech brands featured on the winning list.

Although the last 20 months have been difficult for everyone, in the business world it’s been particularly tough for women. Sadly, the COVID-19 crisis has set women back decades. As today is National Women in Business Day we wanted to highlight some of the problems, and the solutions that females can look to for help.

Ensuring your business has a gender pay report in place has “never been more important”, a leading employment solicitor said. Companies with 250 or more members of staff now have just two weeks to report their gender pay gap information

Women In Digital Business (WIDB) is an alternative membership site for women who want to launch or grow a digital business. The Founder, Natalia Nicholson is a mother of three young children and wanted to provide a viable way for women with children or other responsibilities, to start and scale a profitable digital business. Members of WIDB have access to resources and the opportunity to join the Mastermind programme. The programme runs for 3 months and members receive assistance with all the technical elements involved with launching a business in the digital space.

The ICT sector has been given a swift push at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, during 2020 the number of ICT specialists employed in the EU has increased by approximately 600,000 as compared to 2019. However, the gender gap prevailing in the ICT workforce in the EU, where only one in five ICT specialists is a woman, has retained its relevance.

Women who have an inner circle of close female contacts are more likely to land executive positions with greater authority and higher pay, a 2019 study in the Harvard Business Review found, and we can assume this translates to those of us who are our own bosses; and the benefit a community of professional women surrounding us provides us with. 

I’m a marketing leader in the tech sector and passionate about diversifying our industry. I care about living my values and keeping women paid, well and thriving. Through Possible Ground I work with people looking to enter the tech industry whether that’s through a job or a business they are running.

As the #MeToo movement has swept over the globe, sometimes it seems to me that we live in the world of angry women and confused men. Many of us have certainly lost our capacity to be in our masculine and feminine centres - or yin and yang, or, following Jung, animus and anima - which are available to us regardless of gender. More if we can’t access or use one of them, we aren’t complete as human beings, and certainly not as leaders.

It’s decision time for UK employers. As life has started to return to normal, organisations are recognising that the interim flexible working measures they put in place during the pandemic now need consolidating into permanent policies. 

European companies with female-only founders receive less than one percent of all VC capital investment despite the number of female-led companies almost doubling over the past decade, research by Yoppie, the pioneers of personalised menstrual wellness and period care has revealed.

Playfair Capital, Tech Nation and Google for Startups are joining forces for the sixth edition of their Female Founder Office Hours initiative. This event will be the largest yet, with over 300 female founders and 120 VCs from some of the world’s leading funds, and expected to be as big as success as past years, as data from the previous five events shows that over 27% of companies that have attended have gone on to secure funding from VCs, angel investors or other sources.

We spoke with Anjali Midha, an entrepreneur with a passion for media and analytics and the Founder and CEO of Diesel Labs. Diesel Labs is a content analytics company that addresses the toughest questions facing media companies today: what to produce and where to distribute and market it.

I would be lying if I said that raising capital as a female Founder is an easy process. Even those that make it look easy, have faced invisible barriers that aren’t present with their male counterparts. What I have learnt, however, is that having this knowledge - that I am a woman (and woman of colour) and that I am on the backfoot - simply doesn’t help me at all.

Every brand thinks they can turn on the charm to impress the ladies, but the opposite is often true. While an enormous 89% of women control daily shopping, the overwhelming majority (a whopping 91%) feel advertisers simply don’t understand us. Shocking, I know.

Here’s an interesting fact, companies founded by women bring higher returns from investment. According to a study by Boston Consulting Group, the return from each dollar invested in a 'woman-led business' is nearly twice as high, and the total revenue over a five-year period exceeds the earnings of male-run businesses by around 10%.

In the summer of 2020, I made the leap and set up my social listening agency. Realising there weren’t many agencies in this space, let alone agencies headed up by women of colour, I felt there was ample opportunity to bring my unique perspective and experience to the world of data and listening. (Disclaimer: setting up your own business is not for the faint of heart.) 

Sandy Carter, Vice President of Public Sector Partners and Programs at Amazon Web Services, shared her experience as a pioneering woman in tech. She discussed how embracing diversity drives innovation as well as the importance of empowering the next generation of female leaders.

Over the last few decades, the world has made huge strides forward in promoting gender equality in the workforce. In fact, last year saw the employment gap between men and women fall to 6.3%, the lowest point since records began in 1971.

Menopause seems to still languish in the outdated 'women’s problems' list of things to brush under the carpet when it comes to employee health - despite the fact that just over half the population will experience it.

A diverse team can have a huge impact on a business’ success. Diverse management teams can increase revenue by 19%. Racially and ethnically diverse teams are 35 percent more likely to perform better, and they’re 87% better at making decisions. Inclusive companies are 1.7x more innovative when compared to companies that aren’t diverse or inclusive.