Apparently female entrepreneurship events are “weep fests”, according to this opinion piece published by a media startup. “Why can’t we, for once, stop looking at the whole gender thing whenever we have a roomful of women, stop talking about how tough it is to be women and businesswomen at the same time, and just talk about how tough it is to do business, period?”, the columnist asks.
Why ever not?
There is no point regurgitating data that continually show how women’s startups are funded less often and at lower valuations, with age sometimes a barrier too; how women, regardless of their standing, face sexual harassment and innuendo in the course of every work day; how, regardless of how well-oiled their relationships are or what their qualifications are, women do more work at home and “office housework” at work.
No point, because the screed is a narrow point of view that fails to acknowledge that women entrepreneurs — I prefer the alliterative “female founders” — the world over seem to have many shared experiences and many common themes in their lives. And that many of those experiences and themes have little overlap with problems that male founders face. Even where both bring similar business related competence and capabilities to the table.
I advise a number of female founders from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds — from eastern Europe to Indian to British to any number of hyphenated-identities — in the UK, India and the USA. Here is what I know about women’s entrepreneurship around the world today.
Women are creating startups, because they are ambitious. Most female founders I see are on their second or third careers; their ages range from the 20s to the 50s; some or more have partners; some or more have kids; some or more are also main decision makers for the care of elderly parents. But they share one thing in common — a burning ambition to realise their creative and wealth-generative potential, while juggling everything.
Then something called reality intervenes. Kids fall ill, partners leave, domestic crises arise, elderly parents get sick, funding is hard to find, co-founders are even harder to find and keep, employees need to be paid. In the absence of funding being on tap, many female founders are bootstrapping their businesses. It is at these points I see many female founders review their goals. What I find is not a weep fest. Far from it. I find determination and resolve. I find that these women acknowledge that life is tough but they want it all. Who am I — or someone not in the fray with them — to say what their desires and ambitions should be?
When women discuss issues and challenges — as they do in many closed, some secret, female founder groups that I am privileged to be part of too, aside of my one-to-one discussions with my advisee founders — they find validation. They find they are not alone. They learn that the magnitude of some problems is smaller or bigger than they thought. They get pointed to sources of help and resources. They get support, respite, and encouragement to pursue their ambition with renewed vigour.
That conversation is what these female founder events are for. They are safe spaces for female founders.
These female founder events celebrate the simple fact that many women founders like to live their life in fulsomeness — from heating breakdown at home, to kids teething, to squabbling partners, to communities they live in, to managing the burn rate and knowing how much cash there is in the bank account of the business. Indeed there is research that shows people bring their whole selves to work, not just some thin-sliced, compartment of a person. Hell, people bring their spouses to work with them, whether they like it or not!
These events also provide a place to understand how one can frame one’s tradeoffs, given one’s very specific circumstances. This can be aided by hearing others’ stories. One founder shares details of her divorce settlement to make certain decisions about salary. Another finds a way to balance her childcare needs by working different hours from her co-founders, who sign up willingly to the gig knowing her specific needs for the next few years. Yet another knows she has a roof over her head so she can experiment because her parents won’t throw her out.
If trading both troubles and coping strategies be seen a “weep fest”, I would take that any day over false machismo based on the pretence that it is “just business”.
To dismiss the wholeness of a female founder’s life is to miss the point of entrepreneurship. For entrepreneurs, it never is just business. It is all personal.
And in that “personal” their whole lives are wrapped. They will weep if they want to, but as long as they are forging ahead with their plans, it is all good.