Just Connect: Hybrid work fuels demand for women’s networks

Joanne Webb thought the virtual Girls Club network she’d created for older women looking to let off steam during the Covid lockdowns would “vanish” once restrictions were lifted.

In fact it “took off [over WhatsApp, Zoom and LinkedIn]. In the last two months, we’ve had two to three hundred signups,” said the management consultant.

Entrepreneur Sharmadean Reid launched The Stack World in 2021, with investment from Tetra Pak heir Magnus Rausing and former Monzo bank boss Tom Blomfield, in response to “women feeling neglected, stuck at home” . Its free and paid premium membership has grown to 14,000.

Other women’s member clubs are experiencing a similar trend: Remote work models that took effect during the pandemic have encouraged women to network outside of the office, often as a way to boost their visibility.

“As you build your career . . . you need visibility and to be strategic. This needs networking,” said Nicola Grant, founder of SHe2 Leadership, a group aimed at older women who want to build skills and contacts to land top-level jobs.

She added that women’s desire to connect was also partly driven by frustration with employers’ ineffective diversity initiatives. Grant criticized some companies’ “inauthentic or unsustainable” female leadership programs “failing to provide them with long-term support and critical changes to corporate culture.”

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Women’s networking groups typically offer in-person or virtual meetings for professional women looking to advance their careers. Some, like The Girls Club, offer free online events on topics like how to become a non-executive director and masterclasses on public speaking and ESG. Others, like AllBright and Chief, charge membership fees.

Many of the people who created the groups said the pandemic fueled demand and changed how women wanted to use their time.

“Hybrid working models [mean women] want a network more than ever. . . whether it’s bouncing ideas or [curbing their] isolation,” said Viviane Paxinos, chief executive officer of AllBright.

Florence Villesèche, an associate professor at Copenhagen Business School who has studied women’s networks, said some women felt they needed to justify ‘spending their time away from home’, which men often don’t do.

“If you’re going to take the time to go about something, you need to make it impactful after the pandemic,” Grant added.

The opening earlier this year of a new central London clubhouse by Chief, the group of US members that charges up to $7,900 (and £7,900 in the UK) and bills itself as a club for ” C-suite, senior executives, and accomplished VPs,” is the latest sign of confidence. The chief said his membership doubled last year to 20,000, with most of the fees paid by employers.

Its high prices and focus on older women sparked accusations of elitism, though Chief said there was a niche for senior executives who were overwhelmed by the demands of mentoring female junior workers, running the household and providing assistance.

Céline Crawford, head of operations and people at Fertifa, a women’s health firm, said joining Chief’s London club had eased her isolation. In finance and technology, “you’re often the only woman in a leadership team” and need support rather than just advice.

Claire Davenport, former managing director of Not On the High street, which she runs Women In Tech – Executive and Non-Executive Directors (Wits end), with eight female CEOs (including Channel 4 and BorrowMyDoggy), said women are more open to Zoom than ever before. “Women haven’t always been able to handle networking as easily as men [usually due to childcare issues]and now we’ve found formats that really work for building networks remotely.” Despite the clubhouses, Chief also said the virtual sessions were popular.

Some networks have themselves suffered from exclusivity claims.

In March, one member highlighted this issue when he relinquished his Chief membership after three years. Denise Conroy posted her reasons on LinkedIn, which she said included the Chief’s ghosting of candidates who were women of color, a lack of assistance for underrepresented groups, and posturing rather than political campaigning on issues that affect women. “I’m leaving because I had higher hopes for this organization. Bringing together 20,000 accomplished women has the potential to change the world. However, mobilization does not appear to be on the agenda. . . This is white feminism at its core.

Her criticisms echoed past criticisms of former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In groups, which encouraged women to fit into — rather than challenge — corporate structures.

A media executive who opted not to join Chief pointed out that there was an inherent tension in high-end networks espousing inclusiveness. “How do you square the circle of elite and diversity?” Frenchie Ferenczi, former community director at The Wing, the women’s co-working space which itself faced discrimination complaints before it closed in 2022, said: ‘The difficulty is if people say the message is inclusiveness. , but the reality is not. “

The chief pointed to data showing 33 percent of his members in the United States identified as a person of color and said he provided $5 million in grants last year to members in need of financial assistance.

Supporters pointed out that private women’s clubs were held to different standards than men’s; there tended to be an expectation that women’s clubs should be more inclusive while their men’s counterparts did not face such pressure.

Rebekah Bostan, director of research and operations at InsTech, a community of insurance technology innovators, warned that there is also the danger of “groupthink.” “It’s really easy to enforce your opinions, as a woman [members] they probably had similar experiences.

Villesèche added, “Being with other women can help members understand that barriers are not necessarily personal but more systemic.”

Bostan believed that different networks could be more productive. “If you’re in a senior position, you manage people. The more different people you can meet, the better you can handle. It’s kind of like reverse tutoring. We give managers so little support and structure. Getting someone to talk about their experience means I can take something out of it and apply it to my team.

While the pandemic may have increased demand for women’s networks, some are still failing to reap the financial benefits.

AllBright, for example, more than doubled its membership from about 1,400 in December 2020 to more than 3,000 last year, but it has yet to be profitable. The pandemic forced the temporary closure of its clubs and subsequently closed its Los Angeles location permanently. Losses in the most recent financial year were £6m, down from £13.7m in the previous year ending March 2021. Since Paxinos became chief executive last August, her focus has been that of stabilizing the business, which is now trading at pre-Covid levels.

“Communities don’t grow on the timeline of venture capital,” Ferenczi said. While the former Wing employee believed there was nothing “inherently problematic about paying” to join a community – a fitness club, for example, might have a thriving social life but “the value proposition is more If you’re only paying for the community, create different expectations.

Reid said, “If you want to build something with longevity, it might be slower than you expected. If you want to build trust and community, you have to be slow.

Some remain skeptical of the promise of formal trading networks. Bostan said: “Lean in, lean out. I haven’t seen many make a substantial difference.