And these were already tall poppies, some 70 Scottish women representing the brightest and best in their assorted fields. A quite extraordinary and stellar line-up from all over Scotland and from every employment sector: business, media, arts, medicine, academia and the voluntary sector.

Having them all together in the one place at the one time was, of itself, enormously impressive. “If we’re all here, who’s running the country?” asked one attendee, not entirely in jest. It was an event many months in the planning, the seed sown by an initially small gathering, including Lloyds Banking Group’s Susan Rice, Tari Lang of the eponymous international consultancy, and Culture and Sport Glasgow’s chief executive, Bridget McConnell.

But swiftly the core group burgeoned as women became intrigued and then energised by the thought of creating a forum and subsequently a springboard for the far from monstrous regiment of women who now occupy seats at many top tables so recently labelled Men Only. Women such as Scottish Enterprise’s new CEO, Lena Wilson; Elish Angiolini, the Lord Advocate; Vicky Feather­stone, director of the National Theatre of Scotland.

They all had powerful individual voices; how might a collective one sound? Could they bring a combined and considerable influence to bear on the issues most urgently confronting Scotland 10 years after devolution?

Not, then, a forum for women’s issues, but for women examining national ones. The event was designed as a sort of anti-conference conference. No sectorial navel gazing, no hierarchy, no grandstanding, no lingering death by PowerPoint. Instead, five women from different backgrounds would make a short personal statement to provoke discussion facilitated by Sally Magnusson and Kaye Adams. Their physical journey into that discussion, choreographed by the NTS’s Vicky Featherstone, ensured that nobody would arrive still metaphorically clinging to briefcase and BlackBerry. Instead, they walked through cameo theatre pieces and musical interludes fortifying and enriching some of the Mitchell’s archive, like the wartime correspondence between women in Lanarkshire and Leningrad and a record of female slavery.

All brief, all moving, all ensuring an early sense of inclusion and difference. Moving, too, and provocative, were the frank contributions from leading women liberated for the day by the strict observance of Chatham House rules. Susan Rice’s theme of added value only having meaning

if values, too, were added struck a

particular chord, as did Elish Angiolini’s simple statement that a sup­portive family gave her “permission

to succeed”.

Yet these were not women talking about female concerns; rather, they were women wading into the mainstream challenges currently facing a talented country whose skills base too often seems to punch below its weight. A nation sometimes demonstrating a confusing mixture of bombast and insularity. And, importantly, these were women listening. Listening to how it was for others. Giving respect but not undue deference to their peers. That, too, made it a different kind of gathering.

It seems to have reached a consensus around the need to protect our sense of community and social values even more fiercely in the tough times; to keep reaching out to offer “the hand up rather than the hand out”, in Susan Rice’s telling phrase. The question now is how that group might harness and utilise the energy and commitment generated by such a unique away day. How it can make an independent contribution to Scotland’s future (this event, by design and invitation, was non-party political).

Old-boy networks are the stuff of popular legend. In contrast, it seemed bizarre how few of these major female players knew each other well or, indeed, at all. There is an appetite to change that, and to build on the Mitchell magic. Is it needed? Does it matter whether Scotland’s female movers and shakers also find a collective voice? Perhaps the question to ask is: what happens when that voice is absent, when women from force of habit or fear of derision fail to put a well-motivated head above the parapet? In the soap opera of the Royal Mail dispute, I have yet to spot a female negotiator on either side of that acrimonious divide.