Women make up 77% of the global events workforce but hold just 16% of leadership roles. The 70% is a weekly series profiling the women shaping this industry, from emerging talent to established leaders and asking what leadership actually looks like today.
Twenty-five profiles in, the same themes keep surfacing, regardless of role, sector or career stage. Here’s what’s come up again and again.
Boundaries, wellbeing and burnout
For most of the women we’ve profiled, this isn’t something they solved once and moved on from — it’s ongoing work, revisited week to week. Several described a point early in their careers where saying yes to everything nearly cost them, and the shift that followed wasn’t a single decision but a habit they’ve had to keep practicing.
The fix that came up most often wasn’t vague talk of wellbeing, it was flexible working. Not as a perk, but as the practical thing that made everything else possible, shaped by whether someone is caring for children or family and what stage of their career they’re at.
DEI has moved forward, but only on the surface
Every woman we’ve profiled has been asked how they see the industry evolving on diversity, equity and inclusion. The answer, in one form or another, has been consistent: progress has been real, but shallow.
Speaker line-ups look more diverse than they did a few years ago, and awareness has clearly grown. But that hasn’t translated into the areas that matter most – who holds leadership positions, who’s held accountable when nothing changes, and a persistent sense that some initiatives exist to be seen rather than to change anything.
Setbacks are information, not a verdict
We ask every profile subject what advice she’d give a young woman entering the industry. One answer has come back more than any other, in different words: treat what goes wrong as information, not proof you’re in the wrong career.
The specifics vary, a failed event, a role that didn’t work out, a piece of feedback that stung, but the underlying advice is the same.
Setbacks are how you get better at this, not a sign you shouldn’t be doing it.
Visibility changes what’s possible
The more senior women are visibly in leadership, the more it normalises that path for the women coming up behind them. Several profiles pointed to mentoring programmes, Fast Forward 15 and Elevate came up more than once, as the clearest way this happens in practice rather than staying an abstract goal.
That visibility is also part of what The 70% is trying to do. The point of the series is the same as when it started: the women driving this industry forward shouldn’t have to be sought out.