What does it mean to be a woman in 2021?

In 2018 women-founded businesses raised $2.88 billion in funding. Sound good? This represented 2.2% of the funding raised. Video footage of the funding rounds demonstrated that male and female founders were asked radically different questions. The transcripts showed men being asked promotion-based questions - around goals and advancement potential, while women were asked questions about risk and due diligence. What are the consequences of asking different questions?

A separate Harvard Business Review study showed that entrepreneurs answering promotion-based questions raised on average seven times more financing.

How has COVID affected inequalities?

More women had to give up their jobs in the pandemic than men - to look after the kids and house. Despite women making up the majority of Covid19 frontline staff, they are underrepresented at national and global policy making.

Yoga speaks a lot about male and female energy - and how to balance them both to keep all in harmony. Most commonly we draw from the yin-yang concept of chinese philosophy. Yang is masculine, outward, sun, south, white, fire, active. Yin is feminine, inward, moon, north, black, water, passive

Luckily all men and women have both yin and yang, but the over-yangification of the planet is evident at every turn… all things active and outward are held in highest esteem, which means that all things that require consumption of energy are held in highest esteem - and that's clearly not what our planet needs right now. Boundless consumption will destroy us.

Women are not the sole proprietors of this truth of course, but more women in power and getting funding to get their creations into the world will up the yin levels - and that is critical for our survival

This International Women's Day - please put some deep and powerful yin into the world in any and every way that you can…

Sinead x