The Empty Chair: Why We See Fewer Female Doers

While hosting conversations with different guests on The Doers Global, one pattern quietly kept repeating itself. The guest list/podcast published has rarely reflected equal numbers of women and men. Not half, not even a quarter; female doers have appeared few and far in between.

We have continuously worked on bridging this gap, but this pattern doesn’t seem to disappear. It raises an uncomfortable question. Are fewer women interested in stepping into the limelight? Or were we simply failing to reach the female Doers who were already out there?

One time, we had a round table, and the female guest was more nervous than the male guest. She was very conscious of what she was saying; she didn’t focus on the camera as much. The men, on the other hand, we have hosted spoke freely, almost instinctively owning the space.

The question became harder to ignore when we launched Become a Doer, an academic initiative by Doers Global. During our CAT sessions (Content as a Tool), participation followed a similar pattern. Fewer women signed up.

Let’s dive deeper in this newsletter to find out why there are fewer female Doers on the podcast than we’d like.

That pushed us to look beyond our own program and ask a larger question.
Is this just our experience, or does it reflect something bigger?

The numbers suggest it is bigger.

Across more than 190 countries in the world, only around 30 women currently serve as Heads of State or Government across 28 countries. That is roughly 14 percent of global leadership, representing half of the world’s population.

Even in Nepal, where constitutional provisions attempt to correct this imbalance, the gap remains visible.

Nepal’s 2015 Constitution mandates that at least 33 percent of seats in the Federal Parliament be held by women. But much of this representation comes through the Proportional Representation (PR) system, not through direct elections.

In the most recent elections, only 14 women were elected through the First Past The Post (FPTP) system, roughly 8 percent of directly elected seats. While slightly higher than previous elections, it still shows that political parties remain hesitant to place women in seats they believe are truly winnable.

Nepal did eventually have its first female Prime Minister, Sushila Karki, but that moment came more than 75 years after the start of democratic politics in the country. And it emerged during a period of political instability rather than a normal electoral transition. It raised an uncomfortable question: why do women reach leadership only when systems are already in crisis?

The same pattern appears in corporate leadership.

In Nepal’s commercial banking sector, **women make up roughly 46 percent of