The latest edition of The Future Human Podcast is now on Soundcloud and iTunes, exploring the feminine business values that are reshaping smart companies. This is ‘XX Vision’: a rejection of testosteronic aggression in favour of a feminised corporate culture that preaches risk awareness, emotional due diligence and a ‘profit with principles’ that embraces social and environmental causes. This cultural template for business, first outlined in Iceland by the female founders of Audur Capital, is flourishing in a market where female CEOs are increasingly prized by major companies and small startups alike, and where ground level managerial cultures are quietly transforming into matriarchies.

However, many women argue such an explicitly gendered vision of business can be as restricting as it is empowering. Are they right? And can the aspiring female businesswoman really succeed by playing a game in which men set the rules, or in boardrooms that are not heterogenous?

To find out, we headed to the offices of Delta Economics to meet its founder Dr. Rebecca Harding, an expert on female-led social enterprise who has successfully nurtured a startup in the traditionally male dominated world of financial services. We’re also joined by Servane Mouazan, founder of the female entrepreneur network Ogunte, who appeared on a panel debate at our XX Vision salon.

We also hear from Theresa Burton, founder of Buzzbnk, and serial entrepreneur Cindy Gallop, as well as Jean Hannah Edelstein, who lays out a blueprint for XX Vision for us. Disagreeing with some of the ideas outlined by Jean and Cindy, the pod guests consider the challenges thrown at women who are aggressively ambitious, why successful female entrepreneurs gravitate towards certain business fields, and the broader social expectations that restrict female aspiration.