What does a powerful woman look like?

The Traveling Introvert

. I want to talk about powerful women. What image is conjured up in your head when I say the words powerful women? This came around because I'm working with a client and she has this great little programme that she's running just over, I think two and a half weeks and it's cool. It's got a name, it's got the word Alpha in it. And she's running this group and she is looking for images or we are looking for images to use and social to kind of reiterate what we're talking about.

And what we've discovered is if you go on and on Splash or even in Encounter and you put in powerful women, you generally get images of women with their arms crossed, looking vaguely happy or or looking down on somebody. I tend to be a woman alone or a woman in front of a group of people. And even when you do get those images of women with their arms crossed because a Pountney, that is a powerful stance. It tends to be women around the 20s, maybe no older than 30 or sort of 60s, 70s, kind of a vibe.

Then there's another group where it's a group of women and they tend to be smiley laughy jokey again in the 20s with the age group, with different ethnicities. And that's in a more casual environment. It doesn't tend to be in a in a business environment. And then on the other hand, if you put in powerful women, you also get a lot of women weightlifters as images. So with what I've just said, when I say to you, what does the image of a powerful woman conjure in your mind?

Was it any of those things? And if not, why not? And if so, why? So I feel but we feel I mean, my client feel that there is a gap somewhere in the market of general stock photography. I mean, there's many gaps, but powerful or confident women portrayals for stock photography, multi ethnicity that it has a business is really hard to find. And I don't know why that is. I don't know if, like whenever they say powerful, that people, like, cross their arms because it works well for certain things.

Or this obviously the other thing where they have women dressed up as superheroes, that makes them powerful. But can't you be powerful and happy? Can't be powerful and confident. Why does your stance have to be aggressive to be seen as powerful? And why do you only have to be a 20 something to be seen as powerful according to stock images? So this is an ongoing conversation that we are having within her coaching group and that we are having with each other because we find it really fascinating.

I know that there must be some other people out there who also have this thought that they're not finding the right stock photography. And I know there's a lot more like stock photography out there. That is an all white people, but there's a lot of it that is and it shouldn't be so difficult to find multi-ethnic stock photography shouldn't have to be specialised. It should just be. But listeners, I would love to know what image comes to mind when I say powerful woman and feel free to email me images or put it in the in the Facebook page or tweet it at me, Instagram at Atmeh, whatever it is, I would really love to know.

So thank you for listening. This is [e-mail]. You can email me at [e-mail] with your images of powerful women. Thank you and have a great rest of your week.