That context matters because public affairs doesn’t sit outside society. We absorb the culture around us – good and bad – and it shapes how we work, how we’re treated and what’s expected of us.

Public affairs has always been a profession in motion. Politics shifts, and we shift with it. Elections, Budgets, reshuffles and crises force a constant cycle of reinvention.

Some of that reinvention is technical: adapting to AI, tracking how digital spaces shape political behaviour and keeping pace with policymaking that’s faster and more fragmented than ever.

But the reinvention we don’t talk about enough is personal. Women still walk into rooms where we’re the minority, where we have to prove our expertise twice over, and where the skills at the core of good advisory work – emotional intelligence, diplomacy, reading what isn’t said – are still too easily dismissed.

And this isn’t abstract. The latest Women in Public Affairs (WiPA) survey shows more than a third of women believe men at their level are paid more for equivalent roles.

In reality, these so-called ‘soft’ skills are the hard edge of effective advisory work. They help leaders navigate uncertainty, ground policy in lived experience, and rebuild trust at a time when confidence in politics is stretched thin.

If 2025 showed us anything, it’s that progress isn’t linear. Yes, more women are shaping campaigns and taking public-facing roles but the structures don’t keep pace. Only 23 per cent of women in our industry are in senior manager roles or above, a reminder that visibility and advancement are still two very different things. And you can have record numbers of women in politics and still have a global leader publicly humiliate a journalist for holding him to account.

So as we look to 2026, the question isn’t whether public affairs needs more women. It’s how we ensure the women already here are genuinely heard, valued and supported, and how we create space for many more.

Because public affairs is ultimately about helping the system work better for the people who depend on it. And that becomes far more achievable when the people shaping the conversation reflect the full range of experiences, perspectives and values in the real world.

2025 reminded us how quickly old habits return. 2026 needs to be the year we push forward again – confidently, deliberately, and without waiting for permission.

If anything, the past year has shown that waiting politely for change only delays the progress we all know is overdue.