Shaping Responsible CX, Together: Why Women’s History Month Is a Catalyst, Not a Moment
By Clare Muscutt, Founder of Women in CX
When we published the Women in CX 2026 Manifesto, Responsible CX by Design, it wasn’t a declaration of intent. It was a recognition of reality.
Customer experience now shapes trust, reputation, growth, and risk at a scale we can no longer afford to treat as neutral. The systems we design — increasingly powered by data, automation, and AI — don’t just influence how customers feel. They determine who carries risk, whose judgment is trusted, and where responsibility ultimately lands.
I’ve said it for years, and I still believe it to be true: customer experience doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. And design is never neutral. It is a series of choices — sadly, too often made under pressure, often without the right voices in the room, and increasingly mediated by technology that reflects those decisions back at scale.
As International Women’s Day approaches, those choices become harder to ignore.
Every March, the industry pauses to talk about women. I’ve been part of those conversations for a long time. I’ve spoken on the panels, hosted the events, and helped amplify the stories. Visibility matters. But over time, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with how easily International Women’s Day slips into performance.
We celebrate women’s voices for a moment, without changing the conditions they return to the following week. We tell stories about leadership, while leaving systems untouched. We applaud resilience, while quietly normalising the environments that require it.
At the same time, women working in customer experience, insight, design, and technology are being asked to shoulder growing responsibility. They’re expected to “do AI”, to move faster, to protect customers and brands — often without clear guardrails, shared accountability, or meaningful authority. The language is optimistic. The reality is far more complex.
That tension sits at the heart of our Manifesto. And it’s why we’re approaching International Women’s Day differently this year.
Not as a campaign.
As a design choice.
“We celebrate women’s voices for a moment, without changing the conditions they return to the following week. ”
International Women’s Day also marks five years since Women in CX began.
What started as a response to being the only woman in too many industry conversations has grown into a global community — not because the work was fashionable, but because it was necessary. Five years on, the challenges look different on the surface, but the underlying issue remains the same: women are still too often invited to comment on the future of customer experience, rather than trusted to shape it.
That perspective matters as we look ahead.
Our International Women’s Day programme for 2026 is a continuation of that thinking, not a departure from it. It is grounded in a simple but uncomfortable idea: if AI is now shaping customer experience at scale, then responsibility cannot be an afterthought — and leadership cannot be performative.
Throughout March, we’ll be hosting a series of in-person Responsible CX Design Labs across London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Riyadh, New York City, Toronto and Seattle with the support of some incredible sponsors, including Kantar and Thematic!
The focus of these Labs is Responsible AI in CX by Design — not as a framework or a promise, but as a practical discipline. These are Open Space working sessions for women who are actively designing, governing, and delivering AI-enabled customer experiences inside real organisations, with real constraints.
The conversations are grounded in outcomes, trade-offs, and responsibility. What happens when automation scales bad design? Where does accountability sit when decisions are delegated to systems? And how do we design experiences that are not just efficient, but fair, transparent, and commercially sustainable?
This is not work that can be done from a stage. It requires time, trust, and a willingness to sit with complexity — something women in CX are already doing every day.
Alongside the Labs, we’ll host a global online panel in partnership with Genesys exploring Authentic Leadership in the Age of AI: Leading with Clarity, Courage and Responsibility.
This conversation isn’t about hype or hero narratives. It’s about leadership under pressure. About what authenticity really means when decisions are increasingly mediated by technology, and when the consequences of those decisions are felt by customers, employees, and society alike.
Clarity, courage, and responsibility aren’t abstract ideals. They show up in how leaders ask questions, set boundaries, and create psychological safety for teams navigating change. This panel is about surfacing those realities honestly — not smoothing them over.
We’ll also publish our 2026 Awesome Women To Follow list. Not as a popularity exercise, and not as a one-week spotlight. This list exists to amplify women whose work shapes systems and outcomes over time — often quietly, often without recognition. Women who are building, governing, and challenging how customer experience is designed, not just commenting on it.
Visibility matters. But visibility without substance doesn’t shift an industry.
What happens next matters just as much.
Because if the conversation about responsibility, leadership, and design only exists in March, then we haven’t really changed anything at all. International Women’s Day may create the moment — but it cannot carry the work on its own.
Everything we are doing around IWD this year is designed to continue well beyond Women’s History Month. The questions surfaced in the CX Labs don’t disappear when the events end. They feed directly into our wider 2026 programme, 2026 UnConferences, and into how we work with partners, sponsors, and our global community throughout the year.
Responsible CX by Design isn’t a seasonal theme. Responsible AI in CX isn’t a one-off discussion. And authentic leadership doesn’t belong to a single panel or moment in time.
This is long-term work. And it requires long-term commitment.
Women in CX exists because the industry doesn’t lack ideas or ambition. What it lacks, too often, is intentionality about who gets to shape the future — and under what conditions.
International Women’s Day shouldn’t be a pause from the real work. It should be a moment that sharpens our focus on it.
This March, we’re not launching a campaign.
We’re marking five years of building — and continuing a commitment — to responsible design, authentic leadership, and ensuring women are not just present in conversations about the future of customer experience, but actively shaping it.
Join the Movement
Responsible CX isn’t built in a moment – it’s designed through sustained, collective effort. If you’re ready to be in the rooms where the future of AI in customer experience is being designed right now:
👉 Join us in person at our Global CX Labs in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Riyadh, New York City, Toronto and Seattle.
👉 Secure your place for our online panel debate ‘Authentic Leadership in the Age of AI: Leading With Clarity, Courage and Responsibility’