Not One Woman Was In The Room Where It Happens

Capability. Fear. Or something darker.

Last Friday I posted this photo on LinkedIn. I asked people to count the women.

Almost 100,000 people saw it. 2,233 liked it. 270 reposted it. 282 comments. 200 new followers. And almost no one came to defend it, which tells me something I’ll come back to.

But first. Count them yourself.

Go on. The two largest economies on the planet, sitting down to negotiate the future of trade, of technology, of the lives of billions of people.

Count them.

I’ll wait.

That photo broke something open in me. Not because it’s surprising, Goddess, I wish I could say it was surprising, but because it’s 2026 and we are still here. Still watching rooms full of men make decisions that affect every single one of us. Still watching the evidence be ignored in real time, at the highest possible stakes, with the whole world watching.

Not one woman in the room where it happens.

Not. One.

And the silence from the defenders tells me something interesting too.

Maybe they couldn’t find the argument. Maybe they knew there wasn’t one. Maybe even the men who would usually arrive to explain things looked at that photo and felt, just for a moment, the weight of what it meant.

Or maybe they’re just tired of defending the indefensible.

Here’s what I know from my work.

I have spent years in rooms with women - brilliant, capable, ferociously competent women - watching them make themselves smaller so the men around them felt bigger. Watching them second-guess decisions they were right about. Watching them apologise for existing loudly.

And I have watched what happens when those same women stop doing that.

The decisions get better. The conversations get richer. The blind spots get named. The things everyone was tiptoeing around get said - and then get solved.

I have watched women in leadership positions take on the problems nobody else wanted to touch, because they couldn’t afford the luxury of pretending those problems didn’t exist.

I have watched them fight for outcomes that weren’t just good for them, but for everyone.

This is not anecdote. This is pattern. Decades of research backs it up. Diverse groups make better decisions, generate more creative solutions, produce better outcomes for more people. This is not contested. This is not a “both sides” conversation. The evidence is in.

They just chose to ignore it anyway.

And that’s the part I can’t stop sitting with.

It’s not ignorance. They know the research. These are not uninformed men. These are men with access to every piece of evidence we have ever produced about what good decision-making looks like.

They chose this anyway.

Which means one of three things is true.

Either they genuinely believe - genuinely believe - that the women around them aren’t capable of sitting at that table. (In which case: what does that say about how they see more than half the planet?)

Or (and I think this is closer to the truth) they know exactly what happens when women are in the room. They’ve seen it. They’ve felt it. The dynamic shifts. The unspoken rules get questioned. The comfortable consensus gets disrupted.

And they find that threatening.

OR - and this one sits in my stomach like a stone - it’s simpler and darker than either of those.

They don’t think we’re incapable. They’re not scared of what we’d do in the room.

They just hate us.

Not all of them. Not consciously. But misogyny doesn’t require intention to cause harm. It just requires enough men in enough rooms who have absorbed, somewhere deep in their formation, that women who take up space, who question, who lead, who refuse, deserve to be put back in their place.

Womb envy is real. The historical punishment of women for their brilliance is real. The scold’s bridle wasn’t invented because women were weak. It was invented because women talked.

So maybe the third option is this: we’re not being excluded because we’re less than. We’re being excluded because we’re too much.

Too perceptive. Too questioning. Too willing to name what’s in the room that everyone else is pretending isn’t there. Too collaborative, too creative, too focused on outcomes that actually matter - for people, for the planet, not just for the bottom line and the ego and the legacy.

Too likely to say: why are we doing it this way?

Too likely to mean it.

We’ve always been too much. And they’ve always known it.

They’re not building rooms without us because they don’t see us.

They’re building rooms without us because they do.

I’m a Chartered Organisational Psychologist. I have dedicated my career to understanding why brilliant women make themselves small - and helping them stop.

And moments like this remind me, viscerally, why that work matters.

Because it’s not just about individual women finding their voice. It’s about what we lose, all of us, every single person on this planet, when those voices are locked out of the rooms that matter.

We accept worse decisions. Worse outcomes. Worse futures.

Apparently, punishing women is more important to them than making money. More important than inhabiting a liveable planet.

More important than getting it right.

So here’s what I want to know.

I’m done with the rage being the end of the story. Rage without direction is just exhaustion - and I am tired of being exhausted by this.

What do we actually do?

Not in a “write to your MP” way (though, yes, do that). I mean structurally. Systemically. What are the levers? What works? What have you seen work - in your organisation, your industry, your country?

Because the greatest untapped resource we have on this planet is the unrealised potential of women. And right now, we are governing ourselves, negotiating our collective futures, making decisions that will affect billions of people, without it.

That’s not just a feminist issue.

That’s a catastrophic waste.

Tell me what you think. Tell me what you’ve seen. Tell me what you’re doing about it.

The comments are open. I want the ideas.

Want to do something with me?

And if this fury is landing somewhere personal, if you recognise yourself in the woman who’s been locked out, talked over, or quietly decided it’s safer to stay small, I want you to know that rage is information. It’s telling you something true about what you’re capable of, and what’s been in the way.

I’ve watched women do this work and come out the other side unrecognisable. One asked for a pay rise without apologising and got it. £47,500 more per year. Another set the boundary she’d been rehearsing in her head for years, said it out loud, and didn’t collapse when it landed badly. One decided to stand as a parliamentary candidate. And one was told she wasn’t the same since she met those women - and took it as the highest possible praise.

That’s what deprogrammed looks like. That’s what unfuckwithable does in the world.

That’s exactly what Rise Above is for.

We don’t do palatable. We don’t do shrinking. We do the deep, uncomfortable, liberating work of becoming unfuckwithable - in the boardroom, in the negotiating room, in every room they’d rather you weren’t in.

Rise Above 2026 starts in September. If you’re ready to stop watching from the outside, you can find out more here.

Mx