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10th February - how can I reconcile my transness with my career

Today way a bit of a day of two halves. 

It started well. International Women’s Day is soon and my firm is going to be celebrating some of its inspirational female staff and clients. I have nominated some of my team and others that I mentor and they are going to feature. Hopefully the profile will benefit them and their confidence. HR sent them emails today with the subject Congratulations on being and inspirational women! As nominator I was copied in but when I first saw that in my inbox I thought it was addressed to me. I would definitely like to be an inspirational woman. 

As an aside, I don’t really approve of the corporate appropriation of things like IWD. These things are supposed to highlight the terrible inequalities around the world and how women are treated. UK business can totally do better in treating women equally but denial of education, forced marriage, rape and sexual violence, fgm and all the myriad other ways that women are mistreated are what IWD should be talking about, not ticking some HR box for one day and then carrying on as normal. 

The less positive part of my day, gender-wise was related to leadership, which I have mentioned before. There has been a fair bit of disagreement about our direction and I have now had conversations with a few senior people where the idea of regime change has been discussed. There is a part of me that wants to take this opportunity and push myself forward. And on the subject of being an inspirational woman, I would love to do so as a woman and I would most likely be the only trans woman in such a role in the UK which would be awesome. But I don’t know whether it is possible to do both. Could I really bring this group together when at the same time half of them will be thinking that I’m a freak? It would be awesome though. 

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