Home featured Featured Featured This Women’s Day, the question is not whether women are ready. It is whether your business is Yajush Gupta March 6, 2026 Strathcona principal Lorna Beegan tells Dynamic Business what small business owners consistently get wrong about mentoring women. Why this matters: For SMEs and startups competing to attract and retain talented women, the gap between good intentions and genuine inclusion often comes down to the everyday signals most leaders barely notice. Beegan names them directly. Most International Women’s Day conversations in business circles centre on pipelines, promotions and pay. Lorna Beegan, Principal of Strathcona Girls Grammar, wants to talk about something smaller and, she argues, far more consequential. “The conversations that happen at the watercooler, the jokes made in meetings, the offhand comments delivered with a smile,” she says. “All matter more than many leaders realise.” Beegan leads one of Australia’s longest-running girls’ schools, now in its 103rd year. From that vantage point, she has watched generations of young women move from the classroom into the workforce, and she has some clear-eyed observations for the business owners and startup leaders they are walking into. The first thing Beegan wants employers to understand is who, exactly, is arriving at their door. “When Strathcona’s young women enter the workforce, they do so with a different kind of confidence,” she says. “They are not waiting to be authorised to lead. They have been educated to advocate, to question, and to act with purpose.” At Strathcona, leadership is not