The idea for The She Table first came out of discussions we’d been having with senior women across social care who consistently described the loneliness of leadership; carrying enormous responsibility without a peer group that truly understands the weight of this.
And rather than just being sympathetic we decided to do something pragmatic and create a useful, supportive forum as part of our overall programme of giving back to the social care sector.
We hosted our first gathering in March. Our second in June. In September, we'll bring women together again around the same premise: that senior female leaders in social care deserve a space that's genuinely built for them.
The response has been immediate, and honest. Women arriving uncertain of what to expect and leaving feeling what could only be described as relief. Real conversation. A sense of recognition. The kind of connection you don't manufacture with a networking agenda.
What's also become clear is that this need isn't niche. Care England's recent report ‘The Overlooked Majority’ puts data behind what many of us already know from experience. The care sector workforce is 78% women. At senior leadership level, women hold 68% of roles - a gap, but one the sector performs relatively well on compared to others. The starker picture is at board level, where women hold just 41.2% of positions. A sector built, led, and delivered overwhelmingly by women, still governed disproportionately without them.
The report also surfaces something more uncomfortable: that gender inequality in the care sector is experienced far more often than it is recognised or reported. 64% of survey respondents didn't initially identify gender as influencing their career progression, yet when asked to reflect more deeply, most described experiences that were unmistakably gender based. Bias subtle enough to go unnamed. Caring responsibilities absorbed quietly. A leadership pipeline that thins precisely when ambition should be rewarded.
We're also seeing the sector respond. Since we launched The She Table, others have followed with their own events and initiatives for women in the industry. That's a good thing. The more spaces that exist for senior women in care, the better. What we set out to create, and what we'll continue to build, is something specific.
The She Table is a small, curated, confidential roundtable where women who lead care organisations come together with genuine peer equivalence. With expert facilitation and a genuinely intimate format, it creates the conditions for the kind of conversation most professional settings don't allow.
The Care England report recommends that organisations actively cascade leadership and development opportunities, recognise the burden of unpaid caring responsibilities, and embed cultural change from the top. The She Table supports the women navigating that work in real time, in the roles they're already in.
If you're a senior woman in social care, the September table is set. Is it time to pull up your chair?