Programme Resources

No Boys Allowed: Why Women Need a Different Kind of Leadership Space

Written by Gonia Miksch | Aug 18, 2025 10:04:56 AM

 

Girl, look up.

 

No, not at the sky - although you might want to later. Look up at the senior management, the c-suite, the board. Chances are you’re looking up from middle management, stuck just below the level where the real operational decisions are made.

And most likely? You’re looking up at a boys’ club. Still. In 2025.

 

Deja Vu

It’s not the ’50s anymore, but women are still boxed into the so-called “human facing” roles - the ones men fumble because emotions scare them. They leave the messy, human work to us “emotional girls.”

 

Pandemic Plot Twist

Think back to Covid. Life-or-death decisions everywhere, chaos unfolding. And who handled it better? Countries under female leadership (Research backs this up: here ). Meanwhile, male leaders were tripping over their own contradictions - “Stay home, but don’t. Open windows but keep them shut.” You remember.

 

The Great Emotional Cover-Up

We know this already: empathy, emotional intelligence, the ability to lead without ego - all undervalued in the upper echelons. To climb higher, we’re expected to mask those strengths, polish up our “LinkedIn professional” persona, and pretend feelings don’t exist.

It’s exhausting.

 

Enter: A Different Kind of Leadership

So I’ve built something different. A leadership programme designed for us. A space where we can drop the mask and actually talk about the stuff that matters: menopause, hormones, imposter syndrome, assertiveness, inequality. With the Operational Management Level 5 qualification at the end.  Delivered by women, for women.

No boys allowed.

 

Sign up here 

 

PS: If you’re a man reading this and think it’s a feminist manifesto that needs to be quashed… don’t be scared. You can’t burn us all.