The UK Government’s Treasury Department has just launched a review into barriers for women in business. When I wrote my book about women entrepreneurs, ‘Our Turn’ sponsored by the then Bank of Scotland, little did I know just how many advantages men have thanks to women (and other men blocking women).
Some of the key blockages included, according to research, relative to men, a more realistic sense of success. Men in their cliched bravado tended to be more self confident of their own abilities, (self-attribution bias), and so underestimated the chances of failure and went gung-ho into business.
You’re already familiar with these issues affecting women in the workplace. You are willing to work longer for the same pay as a man, research proves it. Thank you. It makes it easier to pick a man to promote – heck I’m hardly about to move someone up who works the longest hours am I to do the same work?
And it’s unfortunate because the world needs more women entrepreneurs than ever. It needs more women in business because statistically they are more likely to succeed. It needs more women running top companies FTSE companies, because statistically their share prices do better. It needs more women at heads of Government, because statistically it leads to less wars. It needs more women managing household finances, because statistically it leads to less personal insolvencies.
Other obstacles, and research suggests clichés exist out of reality and experience:
Women, underpaid for the same work as men, earning less by the same age, had fewer resources with which to take the leap, and so less likely to take the leap.
Of course, there is the baby factor, lack of affordable nursery care is well documented, but there is also that fewer women want to go back to work full-time and there the part-time do it from home type of entrepreneurial ventures are less well taught, known about – compared to the office or WeWork based entrepreneurial start up – which again to women with small children may not be suitable.
The role models, reported by some women in our book, were hardened, angry, that they could do it, so why all the whinging – in other words, the sisterhood is sorely lacking other than to self-promote not to hand up others.
Consequently, by self-selecting gender specific role models, they may be accidentally restricting their chances of success.
What of bias in capital availability? Bias in venture capital is well known, and don’t doubt that just as employers think ‘when will you get pregnant’ so do investors.
What is to be done? One thing is greater education of entrepreneurial ventures which can be born from home to a significant size, without massive capital and full-time away from home.
But that is one of many options I will speak to the Treasury about.
Incidentally, I wrote the book, ‘Our Turn’, because when I co-founded the entrepreneur mentoring organisation ‘TiE – The Indus Entrepreneurs’ UK there were hardly any women in the organisation – a fault which was ours, soon remedied, not theirs. Yes, it’s a team effort. If you want more women entrepreneurs, work with the men good at it too.
