Aurum
The method.
Every part of this product exists for a reason. Here they are, with the sources.
01
Why sponsorship and not mentoring
- The decision
- We make a third party advocate, rather than coaching the woman.
- Why we made it
- Self-advocacy carries a penalty for women that it does not carry for men, and evaluators shift their criteria against assertive women. Advice cannot fix a scoring rule.
Source: Rudman 1998, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Not claiming
- That mentoring is worthless. It is the wrong instrument for this specific problem.
02
Why ninety days
- The decision
- A fixed ninety day cycle with four stages.
- Why we made it
- Open-ended goodwill has no deadline and cannot be measured. A bounded cycle produces a dated commitment and a reportable outcome.
Basis: Standard practice in programme evaluation, where a defined period with pre-agreed measures is required for any claim of effect.
- Not claiming
- That ninety days changes a career. It changes whether anyone followed through.
03
Why we measure against a control group
- The decision
- Every cohort is measured against a matched control.
- Why we made it
- Without a comparison group, a retention figure is a story. With one, it is a measurement.
Mechanism: Aurum evaluation design: the control is matched on band, function and tenure. Labelled as method, not trial evidence.
- Not claiming
- That this is a randomised trial. The control is matched on band, function and tenure, and we say so.
04
Why she writes one sentence
- The decision
- The first unit produces a single repeatable sentence about work she already did.
- Why we made it
- A sponsor cannot carry a feeling into a room. They can carry one accurate sentence. Putting an experience into words also reduces activity in the brain's threat response.
Source: Lieberman and colleagues, Psychological Science, 2007, on affect labelling.
- Not claiming
- That writing a sentence is therapy.
05
Why the Club has something to do in it
- The decision
- Curated rooms built around shared food and shared making, not panels.
- Why we made it
- Weak ties drive career mobility more than close ones. Shared meals increase cooperation. Occupied hands lower the social pressure of being assessed, so people speak more freely.
Source: Rajkumar and colleagues, Science, 2022.
Source: Woolley and Fishbach on shared meals.
Mechanism: Established findings in occupational therapy and social psychology, labelled as mechanism rather than trial evidence.
- Not claiming
- Any health outcome from craft.
06
Why there is a breathing companion
- The decision
- A two-minute practice, chosen by naming how she feels.
- Why we made it
- Naming a feeling is itself regulating. Slow breathing is associated with a calmer nervous system.
Source: Pranayama as described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and set out by Patanjali.
Evidence: Modern evidence is promising rather than settled; a 2023 randomised trial found improved reaction time but no significant change in heart rate variability.
- Not claiming
- A medical intervention. It is a moment to yourself.
What we will not do.
We do not fix women. There is nothing wrong with them, and a product built on the opposite assumption would be both insulting and ineffective. The constraint sits in how work is evaluated, not in who did it.
We do not score her. The Ledger records what she delivered and who vouched for it. We measure sponsors on follow-through, because they are the ones with something to be accountable for.
We do not claim outcomes we have not measured. Every figure on this site either carries a source or is labelled as sample data. We have no customers yet, and we say so on every page.
We do not sell feelings. If a cohort does not beat its control group, we will tell the organisation, and they should not renew.
If any of this is wrong, we would like to know. Every source here is public.
Read the lineage: this is not new