Being a woman in leadership

The year 2023 marks my 30th year in our profession although strictly speaking it’s only my 27th as a tax adviser since I spent the first three years in audit while I worked out what I really wanted to do. Back in 1993 there were women in leadership roles both within the firm I worked for and in the businesses of the clients I was advising but they were noticeably fewer in number than their male counterparts. In particular the people around the ‘top table’ tended to be men.

The relative numbers just paint part of the picture. What struck me at the time even as a very junior person in the profession was that with a few noticeable exceptions most of the partners at the time fitted a similar profile which I’ll crudely describe as ‘alpha...