Grandparents are secretly fuelling women’s careers
Plus: 🎤 Rihanna on ageing 🥇 hire your way to success
Happy International Women’s Week.
Welcome to the latest issue of Take The Lead, the fortnightly newsletter from The Female Lead. If you aren’t already signed up, please consider joining our growing community of 15,000 subscribers.
Look out for a special newsletter on Saturday revealing the women who have defined the last 12 months for us, to mark International Women’s Day.
As the day approaches, we’re thinking about women at every stage of life. Grandparents today are unlike any other generation of grandparents, writes psychologist and author Terri Apter in our guest article for this edition.
Not only are they living and working longer, a staggering one third of working mothers in the UK rely on them for childcare.
Apter’s new book, Grandparenting explores the new bonds and challenges formed by this evolution - from the savings of billions for the daughters they are helping, to the struggle of returning to a caring role years after your own children left home. Scroll down to read her insights.
In this issue, we’re also talking about running marathons in perimenopause, seizing the moment via Rihanna’s thoughts on ageing, and how to hire your way to success.
Enjoy, and please share your thoughts with us by commenting or replying directly to this email.
The Female Lead Team
We’re talking about…
💡 Gen Z and millennial women in the UK are more likely than previous generations to want to start their own business, according to research from Mastercard.
🏃♀️ British long-distance runner Paula Radcliffe said that going through perimenopause while completing last week’s Tokyo Marathon made the experience “even sweeter”.
💸 Companies where at least 30% of directors are female saw a correlation of 19% higher returns than those without over a five-year period, according to global analysis from investment data company MSCI.
🤔 The unexpected victims of sexism may be… men. A 62-nation psychological study showed a correlation between sexism in a country and lower GDP, higher levels of conflict, lower levels of safety and even shorter healthy lifespans.
Inspire me…
“My legacy is right now. That’s all I have the most control over. My legacy is what I do with my time at this moment.”
Grandparents today are unlike any other generation of grandparents
By Terri Apter, psychologist and author of The Female Lead’s Disrupt Your Feed research
When I became a grandparent, I had to confront the ageist stereotype of a grandparent as an elderly person with limited interests, inhabiting the margins of life, passive and benign. But that was a myth: what I felt was something very different.
First was a fierce attachment to my grandson and a determination to be a significant person in his life.
Second, a new anxiety about my daughter’s wellbeing erupted with memories of my own early years as a mother, when I was caught between desire to be with my children and unyielding professional goals. As a psychologist, my response to this divided experience was to search for more data. This was the inspiration for my new book, Grandparenting.
Toolbox: Hire your way to success
From Edwina Dunn, data entrepreneur and founder of The Female Lead
🤔 Why: If you're leading a big business or a smaller team, or even a personal project, you should think hard about the people around you. Your choice of talent can make or break your success.
🔧 How: By definition, leaders do not succeed or fail alone. We are all only as good as the team we bring together. Your success will be based on how well you put together the strongest team, so choose carefully and think diversity. We all perform better when we work alongside people with mixed talents and skills, and when we avoid hiring 'in our likeness'. Think about The Power of Two: two opposites, working together, can often be an unstoppable force.
Once the team is together, create clear objectives and measures of success and then hand over the power to them to deliver. The best people will deliver the best solution and it becomes part of your success. You don't have to be the only expert in the room - sometimes, you don't have to even be the smartest - just the best at recognising and inspiring talent!
Edwina Dunn's latest book, When She's in the Room: How Empowering Women Empowers the World, is available in the UK and US in hardback, Kindle edition and audiobook, and will be available as a paperback in the US from 13th March.
Final thought
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I mean, this is how it’s supposed to be. It’s one reason why women live so long after menopause. There are very few species when the female lives so long after their reproductive years. It’s advantageous to the next generation.