As a female who has worked in the worlds of industry and academia, there is much to be celebrated, alongside much to ponder when I consider the world of work today. My passion is that education, skills development and career paths are open and accessible to all. Supporting gender balance is embedded in all of Interface’s activities, strengthening knowledge sharing between businesses and expertise from universities, research institutes and colleges. Our focus mirrors that of the Scottish Government’s themes of equality, social inclusion and environmental sustainability and the Scottish Funding Council Gender Action Plan, which helps to remove gender stereotyping of roles through education. W

Research recently released from the Institute for Family Business included data on the leadership of family owned businesses for the first time and it was positive to see that 81% of family owned businesses have females in leadership roles, against just 58% in non-family owned businesses. These figures are based on whether each business has at least one female leader, so digging deeper would likely still show a significant gap, but it got me thinking about what makes family owned businesses more open to female leadership and some of the challenges women face in these roles. There are four types of female leader in family businesses that I can think of: those born into an existing business, p