What business leaders know heading into 2011 is that sustainability is good for business. Sustainability results in both innovation for developing organizations and the social and environmental benefits the world needs to thrive. Smart business minds can't deny this. In this way, it should be safe to call the sustainable approach the highest standard of business.

What we also know heading into 2011, is that we are sick of the gender conversation. It seems the more that research shows how a better gender balance benefits everyone, and the more incredibly smart and talented women prove that point (working alongside smart and talented men), the more obvious it is that conference speaker panels, corporate advisory boards and venture funds are still not integrating that information. Take a gander at the next speaker line up that comes your way. One glance will show a vast pool of mainly white males.

What each of us knows on a daily basis is that we seem to work and live just fine in a gender-integrated environment. Some men stay at home with the kids, some women do. Some men succeed in business, some women do. Some men think linearly, some women do. Some men operate from a more holistic perspective, and some women do too. This is not a question of men versus women. Few of us see that sort of gender polarization in our daily lives. Instead, as Michael Kimmel so wisely argues in his book, The Gendered Society (first published a decade ago, mind you) "it is gender inequality that produces the differences we do observe and that that inequality also produces the cultural impulse to search for such differences, even when there is little or no basis for them in reality."

Fighting that cultural impulse is the charge now. Sustainability demands it. If you take the time to watch even the most recent, much Tweeted TEDWomen presentations of Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Audur Capital's Halla Tomasdottir, you will note absolutely non-gendered truths in what they say. Now, taking one step back, there should be no need for a conference like TEDWomen at all, if we are pursuing a sustainable vision. Those two women, and the many more like them, are among the most cutting edge thinkers out there. With that in mind, a "women's version" platform could well just make an event seem like "Topic Light" (for example, consider a "Green Conference" compared to a "Green Women's Conference").