Is it because I'm a woman?

I want to be honest with you from the outset. I am not entirely sure whether the way I lead is because I am a woman, or whether gender has anything to do with it at all. Perhaps it is both.

This is written from a female perspective, but its lessons apply more broadly , to anyone who leads a finance team, or sits in an exco or boardroom and those who aspire to do either. The conversation about how women lead is important, but it becomes more interesting when we ask: are these traits female, or simply human? Or, to use a word we already have for this, are they simply ubuntu?

Because women are still not in the room in the numbers, they should be. On JSE-listed companies, women hold just 22 percent of CFO roles, 10percent of CEO positions, and 19 percent of board chairs, according to the 2024 Business Engage report. South Africa leads the world in women in senior management - 47.2 percent per the SNG Grant Thornton 2025 Women in Business report - and still cannot get them into the CFO seat, the exco, the boardroom, and the chair. 

At the current pace, gender parity on South African boards is projected to arrive around 2165, according to Stellenbosch Business School's Women's Report 2025. The women coming up behind us do not have that kind of time.

So here are some things I have picked up across more than two decades and five industries.

Do you really know your people?

Getting to know people in a genuine, non-transactional way has served me well as something I have had to be deliberate about. People follow when they feel you actually care about them as human beings, not just as resources. And this applies to anyone leading people. It is not a female instinct; it is a human one.

Do you know what matters to your people outside the office? Are they a mother, a husband, a daughter, a grandparent, a pet parent, a caregiver, a creative, an athlete, a part-time student, a community leader? In a world shaped by AI, we are still fundamentally leading human beings and they can smell fakeness instantly.

I learnt this the hard way. Early in a leadership role, I took my team out for drinks, not because I wanted to, but to tick a box. I had spent my own money trying to manufacture loyalty. The bill made me cry. And it was not on the company tab. The lesson was not about money. It was about intention.

One of my team members was an adrenaline junkie - dirt bikes, jumping out of planes. We butted heads constantly until the day I showed genuine interest in his photographs. Everything shifted. Another had a baby in the ICU. I stopped by the hospital. No agenda. Just presence. These moments cost nothing and do not belong to any one gender.

It is just how you show up for people.

Your role is to empower - not to be empowered

One of the things I have observed is that women often feel they need to prove their authority rather than share it - and that instinct can hold them and their teams back more than they realise.

You do not have to be the smartest person in the room to lead. What helps is self-awareness, knowing your gaps, understanding what your team needs to deliver, and then having the confidence to hire talented people, properly resource them and trust them to do the work. Everyone is gifted differently and the real work of leadership is learning to recognise that, draw it out, and bring it all together.

Talent should not threaten you. It should excite you. Your job is to clear the path - shield your team from organisational noise, remove red tape, give them what they need to excel - and then step back.

I work from a belief that not everyone shares: my role is to empower my team to do their jobs, not for them to empower me to do mine. It is a subtle shift, but it changes the dynamic completely.

Their success is your success. 

Read the room - and know which room you are in

A senior executive once told me I needed to learn to read the room. He was right. I had inadvertently stepped on toes in what I thought was an open, friendly meeting among peers. Things turned hostile quickly and finding my way out, without help from the chairperson and with every other colleague averting their eyes, taught me something I have not forgotten.

I agree that women should lean in more. But leaning in without understanding the culture of the boardroom you are walking into can work against you. Some boardrooms welcome robust debate. Others operate like the chairperson's update, structured and not particularly interested in your spontaneous input. And some conversations are best saved for the coffee break. Knowing when to speak, what to say, and which room you are in - that is often more important than anything you actually prepared.

Having worked across British, Japanese, Middle Eastern/Asian, German, and various South African corporate cultures, I know that cultural nuance in the boardroom is real and consequential. In some cultures, the most senior person speaks first; in others, they speak last.

I was once in board meetings that defaulted to a language I did not speak. The feedback that I had not contributed stung, given the obvious barrier. So, I learned the basics, greeting people in their own language, and began sending emails in their language translated from English. Meetings opened up.

Sometimes you have to lose a battle to win a war.

Guard your reputation - it travels faster than you do

Reading the room is not just about meetings. How you show up socially matters too, perhaps more than it should, but that is the reality for anyone in leadership, and particularly for women. 

Being one of the boys was never an option for me, and I would caution anyone who feels pressured in that direction. What happens at the bar on Friday night has a way of appearing in the boardroom on Monday; used to undermine a presenter, or surfaced at a promotional discussion. Your reputation is always in the room before you are. Tend to it and then let it do its work, because you cannot control every room you walk into.

And then there are the unexpected allies. A male colleague close to retirement, on a predominantly male Exco, used to send me WhatsApp messages after board meetings. Sometimes to say I had diffused a volatile, testosterone-filled situation with what he simply called 'menswees' - a human touch. Other times to acknowledge that I had raised the point everyone was thinking but nobody would say. Once or twice he sent me a question ahead of a meeting, knowing I would do so without exposing him. I will forever miss him in my boardrooms. What an unexpected ally.

And a reminder that this conversation about women in leadership is not only for women to have.

So - is it a woman thing?

I have sat with this question for a long time. Research does suggest patterns. The OneStream Glass Chair study (2025) found that companies led by women CFOs tend to deliver stronger shareholder returns, and that underperforming firms can see a meaningful uplift after appointing a woman to the role. 

Boards with greater gender diversity appear to face fewer governance failures. These findings matter and should not be dismissed.

But I keep coming back to ubuntu. Are these female traits or human ones that some of us have been more encouraged to develop? 

I have worked alongside men who lead with extraordinary empathy and women who lead with none. The traits are not gendered. What is worth examining is what it still costs women to get to the seat - in movement, in patience, in navigating rooms not always designed for them. That is the more honest and more urgent conversation – and – I speak from experience.

I always expected moments of being dismissed or undermined; not to accept it but to be ready for it. When it happened, I was less shaken than I might have been. You cannot fight every battle. There are people you will never convince, regardless of what you deliver. 

Leadership can be a thankless role so acknowledge your own milestones, because the culture may not. Sometimes success will not be attributed to your leadership. Lead anyway. Your people know.

To every woman reading this and wondering whether you are ready: you probably are. Know your room. Guard your energy. Find your allies; they will come from the most unexpected places. Lead with your whole self.

Your chair is waiting!