“Women belong in all the places where decisions are made.” This has always been one of my favourite quotes. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice was a trailblazer who spent her life dismantling legal barriers for women and championing equal rights. Her words are simple, but they cut to the heart of the issue: presence and influence matter.

And yet, decades after Ginsburg first said them, the data still tells a sobering story. Women hold just over a third of leadership roles in the UK, and in some industries the imbalance is even greater. Healthcare, for instance, is 70% female in its workforce but only 25% female in leadership positions. Representation is improving in some boardrooms, but when it comes to senior decision-making roles, progress is frustratingly slow.

Representation in the room, however, is only part of the challenge. Research shows women speak up less than men in meetings, sometimes because of self-doubt, but often because of cultural and structural norms that undervalue their contributions. As Caroline Criado Perez points out in her book Invisible Women, these patterns aren’t just about confidence, they’re about systems designed without women’s voices at the centre. When women’s input is missing, decisions can fail to consider half the population, leading to blind spots that impact products, policies, and workplaces.

Why Inclusive Leadership Matters

Inclusive leadership isn’t just about fairness, it’s about better business. Diverse perspectives lead to stronger decision-making, higher creativity, and greater resilience. When leaders actively seek out and amplify underrepresented voices, they unlock ideas that might otherwise go unheard. The result? More engaged teams, smarter strategies, and better performance.

But if gender parity in leadership is unlikely to happen in our lifetime, we have to ask: how do leaders and organisations make increasing female opportunities a reality, not just a bullet point on an agenda?

From Representation to Agency

Being in the room is not enough if you don’t have the ability to shape what happens there. That’s why agency is so critical — it means having the power, confidence, and support to influence decisions and outcomes that affect your work and career. Research shows that when organisations increase agency for all employees, engagement rises, innovation improves, and performance follows. Yet studies and lived experience tell us men still have more agency at work than women.

For the leadership landscape to truly shift, women need both a seat at the table and a platform to speak from. This isn’t about replacing one group’s voice with another’s, it’s about ensuring everyone’s voice can be heard, valued, and acted upon.

Unmute: A Conversation That Resonated

Earlier this year, we ran free events across the UK called Unmute: Empowering Female Talent to Speak Up. The response blew us away — record registrations, packed rooms, and conversations that lasted well beyond the scheduled sessions. Women told us they wanted practical tools, not platitudes, and a space to connect with others navigating similar challenges.

One of the most talked-about strategies was something deceptively simple: Hear, Repeat, Credit. Inspired by the women in the Obama administration, this approach works like this: when a woman makes a valuable point, a colleague repeats it and gives her explicit credit. It’s a small act with a big impact, ensuring the idea sticks, the speaker’s contribution is visible, and her credibility grows.

What Leaders Can Do

Leaders and organisations can amplify underrepresented voices by:

• Asking directly for input from people who may be overlooked in discussions.
• Actively amplifying contributions by repeating ideas and giving proper credit.
• Creating visible role models across industries. If women can’t see people like themselves in leadership roles — whether that’s running a manufacturing plant, leading an engineering team, or heading a boardroom, it’s harder to imagine they could do it too.

When women see it, they’re more likely to believe they can be it.

The Last Word

Turning up the volume on female talent benefits not only women, but the organisations and societies they help shape. The goal isn’t to speak over others, but to ensure that everyone, regardless of gender, has the agency to be heard.