There’s a particular flavour of awkward that comes with bad networking. The lukewarm wine in a plastic glass. The lanyard. The man who introduces himself by job title and then talks at you for
eleven minutes. The 7am breakfast in a windowless function room where someone is doing a “60-second pitch.”
Most women in London have been to that event… at least once.
This is a guide for the women who want something different — not a transactional handshake economy, not another LinkedIn coffee, not a room where you have to dim yourself to be liked. A
guide for women who want to be in the right room: full of interesting, generous, accomplished people, in a venue that does not make you want to weep, with a drink that does not come out of a
box.
That’s what Hotsy Totsy is for.
The trouble with traditional networking in London
London does not lack networking events. Open Eventbrite on any given Tuesday and you will find a hundred plus. The problem is not volume.
The traditional model — BNI-style breakfast meetings, badge-and-handshake mixers, panel events where you sit in rows facing forward like you’re at school — was built around a particular vision of professional life. One where networking is a separate activity you bolt on to your week, with its own dress code, its own scripts, and a deeply unpleasant ratio of small talk to actual connection. You go to “do networking.” You leave with seventeen business cards from people you will never speak to again, and a vague feeling that you have wasted an evening or early breakfast. But the model is a good fit for some! And there are a few ‘new kids on the block’ such as Human First.
Often for women, the model fits even worse. Research consistently shows that women’s careers are advanced less by transactional weak-tie networking and more by deeper, trust-based relationships — the kind you genuinely cannot build over a name badge and a stale canapé. We will get to the research in a moment, because it is striking. But first, the lived experience: most professional women in London do not want more networking. They want better friends, better connections, better referrals, better rooms, and a better, more enjoyable event! Ideally all at once. Being in the right room!
That is the thesis of Hotsy Totsy. And the data, it turns out, is on our side.
The science of women supporting women (it’s not just a slogan)
When researchers at Northwestern’s Kellogg School studied the post-graduation outcomes of more than 700 MBA students, they expected to find that the same kind of network helped both men and women succeed. They did not.
For men, what mattered was centrality: being well-connected to lots of hubs across the network. The gender composition of their inner circle had no measurable effect on where they ended up.
For women, the picture was completely different. The women who landed the most senior, highest-paid roles had two things in common.
- They were centrally connected across a broad network
- They had a tight inner circle that was predominantly other women
Women with that combination secured job placements roughly 2.5 times more senior than women without it. A 10% increase in network centrality alone translated to a 59% lift in placement level — but only when paired with that female inner circle.
In plain English: for women, a wide network is necessary but not sufficient. You also need a small, trusted group of other women who know you well enough to tell you the truth, recommend you for things you would never recommend yourself for, and warn you off the rooms that will eat you alive.
That’s the multiplier. That’s what we’re building with Hotsy Totsy.
The 2025 McKinsey and LeanIn Women in the Workplace report makes the supporting case. Over 80% of women managers and above say networking has been instrumental to their career progression — including 90% of those who have joined a board, 84% of those who have broken into the C-suite, and 81% of those who have secured a higher-paying role. More than 70% of professionally networked women report securing direct business opportunities through their connections.
And yet the structural support gap is still wide open. The same report finds that only 31% of entry-level women have a sponsor, compared with 45% of entry-level men — and employees with sponsors are promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without. The world has not yet caught up with what the research has been saying for a decade.
So when we say “women supporting women,” we are not putting it on a tote bag. We mean the documented, measurable, career-altering effect of being in genuine relationships with women who will sponsor you, refer you, recommend you, and call you when something good is happening. The kind of relationships that cannot be built in a room where everyone is performing.
What “Hotsy Totsy” actually means
Hotsy Totsy is a 1920s expression meaning just right — fashionable, exciting, the very thing. We picked it on purpose. The 1920s gave us women who voted, women who worked, women who wore trousers and danced in basements and built professional lives that previous generations could not have imagined. They also, crucially, had a brilliant time doing it.
That is the energy. Substance and sparkle. Real connection and a properly good drink. A room of women who are at the top of their game and also know how to laugh.
Some of what we are not:
We are not a BNI-style referral group with mandatory attendance, pitch slots and weekly headcount reports. We are not a panel-and-prosecco evening with a sponsor banner and a queue for the loo. We are not an “ambassador programme” that wants you to flog tickets to your colleagues. We are not LinkedIn in a room.
We are also not a club that requires you to be a particular age, stage, or kind of woman. London is not short on networks that quietly cater only to one demographic. Hotsy Totsy is intentionally mixed — founders sitting next to senior corporates, creatives next to consultants, women in their thirties next to women in their sixties, women just back from maternity leave next to women just back from a board meeting. That mix is the point.
The London women’s networking landscape in 2026
The London women’s networking scene has matured significantly over the last five years.
The members’ clubs occupy one end. AllBright pioneered the women-first private members’ model in London and remains a fixture; the University Women’s Club is a beautiful and far older institution near Mayfair with a different, more traditional character.
The professional networks make up another category. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry runs a Women in Business Group; the Women in Business Network (WIBN) runs structured local chapters; Lean In has a London circle; Everywoman, AllBright Academy, Six Figured Females, I Want to Network (with numerous chapters) and several industry-specific networks (women in tech, women in finance, women in law) all operate in the city. These tend to be more formal — speaker events, panel evenings, awards dinners.
Then there are the community-led groups — Meetup-based circles, WhatsApp communities, the lovely informal collectives that have grown up around individual women with strong networks of their own. These are warm and accessible, with mileage that varies depending on who is in the room on the night, and who you want to be in the room with.
Hotsy Totsy is built deliberately in the gap none of these quite fill: the gap between club and network. Most clubs are wonderful spaces but the networking is incidental — you might bump into someone at the bar or you might not. Most networks are useful for business but the social element is bolted on, not natural and organic and the venues are often grim. We wanted both, on purpose, in the same evening, in venues that make you want to put on something fabulous, and enjoy.
Inside a Hotsy Totsy room
A Hotsy Totsy event usually looks something like this.
You arrive at a beautiful venue — a private dining room at one of London’s better restaurants, the upstairs of an independent members’ club, an unexpected room in an old building near St James’s, a townhouse in Marylebone, often with a nod to art deco and the 1920s. We are deliberate about venue because where you are shapes how you behave. Beautiful rooms make for braver conversations.
The format is loose and tight at the same time. There is enough structure that you will not be left hovering near the bar wondering who to speak to — we do warm introductions, we move people on, we host. And there is enough looseness that the night can go where it wants to go. Sometimes that means a curated dinner with a single big conversation. Sometimes that means cocktails and small clusters that reform every twenty minutes. Sometimes it is a private viewing, a cultural moment, a guest in the room whose presence elevates everyone else.
What you will not find: pitch rounds, sponsor pop-up banners, lanyards, name badges with your company crammed in 8-point text underneath your name, or any of the small daily indignities that the traditional networking world has decided are mandatory. But you might find a place name card with your name on it at the table. And you will find women who are pleased to be there, who came because they wanted to, and who are not auditioning for anyone.
It is, fundamentally, a really great evening out — that happens to be full of women who can change your life.
Who Hotsy Totsy is for?
Hotsy Totsy is London based for women who:
Are good at what they do, and have stopped wanting to prove it in every room they enter. Want connections that are useful and warm — referrals, opportunities, sponsorship, and the friends you actually want to text on a Sunday. Are bored of professional events that confuse seriousness with dullness. Care about being in the right room — about the calibre of women they spend an evening with — and are willing to be in a curated environment to make that happen. Want to be visible but without being on stage. Want to support other women, and would like the favour returned.
It is not for women who are looking for a hard-sell environment to flog services into. It is not for women who think networking should be transactional, scripted, or aggressive. It is not for anyone who wants to bring an MLM (multi level marketing), a crypto pitch, or a pyramid scheme dressed up as wellness. Those are not our rooms.
We are mixed across sector, stage and life chapter. Founders, partners, directors, consultants, freelancers, creatives, returners, board members, women in their first senior role, women in their fourth. The common denominator is calibre and generosity, not job title.
Five things we do differently
1. Curation is the work. We are intentional about who is in the room. Every member adds something.
2. The venue is part of the message. We host in places that make you want to be there. Members’ clubs, private rooms, beautiful corners of the city. If a room makes you feel small, conversations get small.
3. The format is hosted, not staged. Nobody pitches. Nobody performs. We make warm introductions, we move the room, we host — so you can actually talk, eat, drink and connect, instead of working a crowd alone.
4. The social and the professional are not separated. Real friendships generate the best referrals. We do not pretend otherwise. Some of our most career-changing introductions have happened over a second martini, not a structured 1-2-1 slot.
5. The reciprocity is explicit. We talk openly about sponsoring each other — recommending each other for the speaking slot, the board seat, the new role, the introduction. We treat that as the actual job of the network, not a happy side effect.
How to know it’s working
The networks that work for women do not announce themselves loudly. They show up in small, accumulating ways.
You start being introduced to people you would not have reached on your own. You start receiving messages that begin “I just put your name forward for —”. You stop arriving at events alone, because you now know seven women who will already be there. You stop preparing your “elevator pitch” because everyone already knows what you do. Opportunities start finding you rather than the other way around. You find yourself, slightly to your own surprise, doing the same for other women.
That is the inner circle effect the research describes. It is not magic. It is the predictable outcome of being consistently in the company of women who know you, trust you, and have your back.
The London-specific bit
A note on geography. London networking is its own animal. The city is large enough that you can spend a decade in one professional bubble without ever crossing the women three streets away who would be perfect for your business. It is small enough that the right introduction can change your life inside a month. The rooms matter more here than they do almost anywhere else.
We are deliberate about being a London network for that reason. Our events happen in the places London women actually want to spend an evening — Soho, Mayfair, Marylebone, Fitzrovia, Notting Hill, the City when it suits. We work with venues that respect their guests. We attend to the small things: the lighting, the food, the temperature of the wine, the reception. The bigger things — the introductions, the warmth, the substance — only land if the basics are right.
It is also a network that pays attention to London’s wider cultural calendar. The seasons, the openings, the long summer evenings, the dark winter nights when you need a reason to leave the house. The shape of the year matters. We try to be in it, not parallel to it.
Come and see
The honest pitch is this: if you have read this far, you are probably the kind of woman we built Hotsy Totsy for. You have been to enough bad networking to know what you don’t want. You know that your career, your business and your life all get better when you are surrounded by the right women. You suspect that the right room could change something for you, and you are tired of looking for it.
So come and see. We run regular intro events for women considering joining, and we are happy to meet for a coffee first if you want to ask the real questions before you decide.
The 1920s women got dressed up, went out, did extraordinary things, and looked after each other. A century on, the brief has not really changed. London is full of brilliant women. The work is making sure they meet.
Ready to find your room? Enquire about membership, request an invitation to our next event, or join the mailing list, or get in touch — and we’ll take it from there.
Hotsy Totsy is a curated women’s network for London. Founded on the belief that the best professional connections happen in the right rooms, in the right company, with a really good drink in your hand.
