The Blend is a series of virtual workshops created in partnership between our founder Sarah Abbott MW and business psychologist Julie Goddard, The Success Architect. These workshops are designed to increase the representation of women in leadership roles within the wine and drinks industry
The big picture
Women under-participate in the global workforce.
What does that mean, practically? According to the OECD, it means that the global economy is missing out on six trillion USD per year. $6,000,000,000,000.
Of course, some countries integrate women into the workforce more effectively than others. These countries uniformly have government polies which support more women in high-paying, productive work. Policies like differentiated, individualised tax systems; affordable, integrated childcare; education and training systems which promote awareness of and mitigate against the perpetuation of gender stereotypes. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone that the UK only ranks 17th out of the 33 OECD assessed countries.
What does this show us? That we need top-down action if we want sustained gender diversity – just general diversity – in the UK wine trade.
The small, personal picture
In wine, certainly in UK wine, there is very little data on the rates of participation for diversity and gender equality. There have been some surveys conducted, for example by Gus Gluck and Jancis Robinson MW, which have been a great first step. Though we lack systematic data, we can look around us to see what’s going on.
Wine industry leadership is not diverse. You only have to look at announcements of recent senior-level roles being filled. We’re just acknowledging a global truth: underrepresentation in gender and ethnicity is costing the world in profitability and productivity. It’s costing our industry.
Why we need to take action
It is a fact that when businesses put diversity, participation and inclusion at the heart of their strategic thinking, their businesses become better. They make more money.
This is about doing not only what’s right – but what’s essential for the health of our industry. And for our souls.
What we’re going to do about it
We’re launching The Blend.
This is a new initiative of virtual workshops created in partnership between Sarah Abbott MW of Swirl Wine Group and business psychologist Julie Goddard, The Success Architect.
Aside from being a qualified business psychologist, Julie is also a leadership coach and mentor. Her speciality has been working with women in the financial services sector which has historically struggled with gender inequality. She’s seen the practical benefits for business, working with both individual women and companies in this sector to increase the number of women in leadership positions.
Essentially, that’s what we want to do in wine.
How will The Blend workshops work?
We aim to make these workshops as accessible as possible. They’ll be available online and will tackle the foundations of developing a leadership mindset, values, confidence and aspiration for women in wine.
One thing our industry does not lack is women with talent and ambition. But that can only take one so far. We must engender systemic change in our industry, to make our industry richer in every sense. To do that we need to ensure that women have clear paths to leadership – we can’t just wait and hope for it to happen organically.
You can encourage talented women as much as you like, but in order for that to be impactful we must engage everyone. From existing senior leaders in the industry down – that means talking to a lot of high-achieving men and women.
These virtual workshops will be delivered by Julie & Sarah – and we welcome support and help from every part of our industry.
It’s fundamentally practical training. But behind it is our hope that we can make this equal representation one of the most fervently held intents of our industry at large.
