Gender pay gap action plans: why visibility and strategic confidence are key to success.

Early in my career as a business journalist, I noticed something odd.

If you looked at the guests we booked for TV and radio business programmes, you could be forgiven for thinking women did not work in business at all.

The contributors were overwhelmingly male. Male chief executives, male finance directors, male marketing directors, male authors, male experts. My little black book of contacts was full of them. And I remember thinking, surely there are women in business. Where are they?

At the time, I drew the wrong conclusion. I assumed maybe women just did not like doing this sort of thing. Maybe they were less interested. Maybe they did not want to put themselves forward.

Of course, that was not the truth. The truth was far more revealing. Women were there. They just were not visible. And if you cannot see someone, it becomes surprisingly easy to leave them out of the room when it matters.