Book IWD Speaker: Diana Parkes

Give to Gain? Why focusing effort off the true battlefield won’t deliver change in the workplace — and what will.

Despite decades of activity aimed at advancing women at work, progress on pay, progression and recognition remains slow, uneven and fragile.

This session challenges a hard truth: much of the effort to improve women’s workplace outcomes has been directed away from the true battlefield — where power, funding, decision-making and accountability for opportunity actually sit.

Women are not passive. They are calling out inequity, sharing experiences, demanding change, and investing significant time and emotional labour in finding solutions. Much of this work takes place in women-owned and women-dominated spaces dedicated to addressing workplace barriers. These spaces matter: they provide language, validation and shared understanding.

However, they also have a structural limitation. They typically exclude the gatekeepers of stasis versus change — those who control priorities, resources and outcomes.

When effort remains concentrated away from those front lines, activity increases, but leverage does not.

Grounded in original research across 35 sectors and the insights and practical strategies set out in Understand: Dare: Thrive. How to have your best career, from today, this session reframes where and how sustainable workplace change is secured.

It equips women at all levels with the whys and hows to make the most significant impact — securing positive, sustainable benefit at individual, organisational and workplace culture level.

By enabling many women, regardless of level or seniority, to act in parallel inside their organisations, this approach accelerates change across multiple fronts — long before formal leadership roles are reached.

This International Women’s Day, Give To Gain is reframed — not as a call for women to give more, but as a call to focus supported effort where it can finally deliver workplace change.

Speaker Bio:
Diana Parkes BSc BSc MBPsS is a leading expert on women’s success at work and the systemic barriers that shape recognition, progression and reward. She is the founder of The Women’s Sat Nav to Success Ltd, a social enterprise she has led since 2007, and the author of 'Understand: Dare: Thrive. How to have your best career, from today'.

Over the past two decades, Diana has delivered workshops, talks, mentoring and development programmes to thousands of women across sectors, supporting them to secure greater recognition, opportunity and reward at work.

Her work combines original research, psychological insight and extensive practical experience to support women and organisations to convert contribution into outcomes — and to accelerate progress where traditional equality efforts have stalled.

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