Happy International Women’s Day from ILX!

International Women’s Day is a wonderful opportunity to recognise (and celebrate!) the work, lives struggles and achievements of women around the world. Project Management has been a typically male-dominated role since its infancy, and even today the ratio still sits at 70:30. However, this is changing. According to the APM Salary and Market Trends Survey last year, the number of women entering the profession is currently double the number of men.

What better way is there, we thought, to learn as much as possible about the role of women in project management than by asking them directly? We spoke with 4 fantastic female project managers from a range of project environments, who have very kindly shared with us their experiences and advice. A huge thank you to all of them for taking the time to contribute – we highly recommend following them on social media!

Hayley Hinsley is a Digital Project Manager and qualified PRINCE2 practitioner. Hayley also posts fantastic, engaging (and often very funny!) project management articles on her blog, which you can read here: https://medium.com/@hayleyhinsley . We also recommend watching her fantastic talk “Aim Wide, Not Just High” here: https://vimeo.com/album/4997210/video/256612044 . You can follow her on Twitter @hayleyhinsley

How did you get into project management?

"I was working in the Admin department of a company, and held a very in-depth level of business knowledge and commercial awareness when I was approached by the CTO and asked if I would be interested in a move to Development - which I of course was! I started off my career in Development as a Systems Analyst and Tester, then naturally grew my role and responsibilities to include creating project briefs, running planning sessions, organising the whole team’s workload and handling communication with the business. I absolutely loved every aspect of what I was doing and wanted to learn more so went on an intensive 1 week ILX Prince2 Foundation & Practitioner course and haven’t looked back since!"

What do you like most about working in project management?

"I really enjoy being able to lead and serve my team, building good relationships with everybody across the business and sharing information. Communication is absolutely key in my role and I enjoy both written and verbal forms, enabling me to manage expectations and create a shared vision and goal to work towards. I’ve also always taken great pleasure in planning and organising: even in my personal life I keep lists and spreadsheets of everything so that’s an