Business initiative: Women step up

Cork woman, Helen Wycherley has been announced as the incoming president of Network Ireland, the country’s leading women’s business network.

The theme for Helen’s presidency is ‘Step Up’, a demanding yet encouraging approach designed to help Irish women fulfil their potential by asking them to ‘step up and do more’.

This represents a fresh attempt to put women at the centre of their own success by recognising their innate ability to bring about change, as Sindy Joyce has demonstrated.

We have a paucity of women not only in boardrooms but also in the first rank of politics and other major endeavours.

Solutions so far to this have drifted between treating women as victims of male intransigence or enshrining boardroom and political quotas in legislation.

Victimising women causes resentment while quotas have been shown to be not the panacea they were hoped to be.

Ms Wycherley’s approach is a more positive and enlightened one and more respectful of women.

We wish her and her colleagues every success.