Why it sucks to be a single girl in this modern world

I'm a girl. I'm single. And I'm a leader. 

And those 3 things combined are frustrating. 

I want to learn; I want to be mentored, discipled and led to places that I have not been before, so that I can lead others there.

What's your big deal you ask? Well... I'm a single girl and a leader and I'm in the Christian world. 

I'm very much surrounded by great leaders. Some of them are women and some of them are men. The problem for me is, that a lot of the leaders who are where I would like to be, are men.

Men in the Christian world have set up boundaries. They are there for their safety and the safety of their families (and those boundaries SHOULD be in place).

But those boundaries also mean that men won't spend any one-on-one time with me. I will not ever be invited to go along on a business trip to get mentored and even going to a conference is hard, unless there's more than one girl going.

Those boundaries are important for the leader who set them up, but they don't really serve me. (and they are not designed to!)

And of course the boundaries are also there, because someone of my gender has messed up before and now even driving in a car together can look sketchy.

All good reasons, but I can't stop feeling like 

I'm getting punished for something I didn't do!

And please understand that I don't want the boundaries removed! I'm a big fan of boundaries, marriages and kids growing up in one house with 2 parents. I don't want to EVER jeopardize that.

But I want to start a conversation and see if others have run into this. And how did you solve it? (I'm interested to hear from everyone, but especially from single women in leadership... It can't be, that the solution to this would be marriage!)

Oh, but what about getting mentored and discipled by women leaders, you say? Well, what a quaint idea... That would be splendid. But a lot of women leaders in my world are leading... Well, women specific stuff.

There are women in leadership who help women through marriage and family stuff. Or women who are struggling to find their own identity, because their husband is some big wig leader.

I just don't have (those kind) of identity issues. I just want to know how to lead a group of people (guys and girls), how to run an organisation, how to be more strategic and how to network. 

There's no real solution to this problem. But it's surprising how in this modern world, where people pretend that guys and girls are equal, I find myself stuck. That whole equality stuff is a bunch of bogus it seems. 

What am I going to do? I think I will look outside of my Christian world to see if I can find women leaders who are already doing what I want to do. And I will somehow try to creep make a way into their world and figure things out.

And yes, I will continue to read books, listen to podcasts and hang out as much as I can - without jeopardizing anyone's family - with people that inspire me to be a better leader.

Have you run into any of those problems before? And what were your solutions? And do you know any single women in leadership that I should try and connect with?

Oh, and if anybody has connections with Angela Merkel, let me know! That would be a fascinating conversation. :)