Women are being challenged to stop apologising for having boundaries, celebrating their successes, or being a certain size or shape as part of a new venture.
Betty Adamou, award-winning Serious Game and Gamification designer, expert, and author who lives in Ipswich, started the Not Sorry Club as a non-for-profit organisation to get women to be their more authentic selves.
The 35-year-old experienced years of gaslighting — a detrimental type of behaviour which makes people question their sanity, doubt memories or their perception of reality.
Now, she's created a six-part series of programmes on BBC Radio Suffolk with Jon Wright, addressing topics such as equality in the home, with guest appearances from leading women.
"The premise of the idea was to be inspiring and celebrate unapologetic women," she said. "Women find themselves apologising all the time and my experiences with gaslighting led to me being very apologetic.
"I wanted to develop a global sisterhood after a work tourism retreat in Bali where I spent a month with women who showed me what having a group of supportive women could be like and I wanted to recreate that.
"As a female founder I have seen all levels of women in roles where they're being apologetic, from CEOs to assistants.
"When we don't apologise unnecessarily and use the word sorry, we feel more confident and are perceived to be more authoritative."
Numerous psychology studies have found men actually apologise fewer times a day than women, as their threshold of what is deemed offensive behaviour is much higher.
The Not Sorry challenge asks women to hold back their unnecessary sorry's for one week: “Sorry, can I just ask a question?”, “Well, I’m sorry but I think….”, “I’m sorry that I feel this way…”.
Mrs Adamou said the engagement with the venture so far has been crazy and is pleased so many women have been able to resonate with some of the experiences and issues raised.
She says women themselves can also contribute to the feelings of shame, but that the key to changing this is having strong female role models and mentors.
Join the Not Sorry challenge, listen to the six-part radio series or find out more about the Not Sorry Club here.
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