Some rules are there for a reason. Others are simply there because nobody has asked the question in a very long time.

Created by the team behind The Female CEO®, this global digital magazine is read by women in business around the world — women building companies, careers, communities and lives on their own terms.

Issue 69 is called Rethinking the Rules.

Not because every rule needs breaking. Not because disruption is automatically progress. But because the way things have always been done should never be the only reason we keep doing them.

This issue is about looking again.

At the systems we work inside. The definitions of success we inherit. The ways we lead, communicate, use technology, protect what we build and decide what progress is supposed to look like.

Our cover star is Tara Mackings BEM, founder of Tailored Leisure and a woman whose work has been shaped by one deceptively simple question: Why not?

Why shouldn’t accessibility be better? Why shouldn’t lived experience shape the spaces and services people actually use? Why should anyone be expected to accept a barrier simply because it has always been there?

That instinct runs through the whole edition.

Across Issue 69, our contributors challenge assumptions around leadership, ownership, identity, work, technology, wellbeing, visibility and growth — each asking, in their own way, whether the rules we have inherited still deserve to stay.

Because sometimes progress does not begin with a bigger plan.

Sometimes it begins with being willing to question the one you were handed.