What Is A Feminist Entrepreneur? And Are You One?

While feminism comes in more than 50 shades, most would agree that the unifying concept that underpins all variants is the belief that a better world happens when we can achieve a state of equality of opportunity and inclusion for everyone, as their authentic selves.

Entrepreneurship also comes in many shades, but for some reason, the entrepreneurship eco-system and its attending start-up culture seems to be fixated on one, namely the creation of high growth, scalable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) based enterprises, usually founded and run by male founders. And if you find this surprising, you also might want to consider these facts:

• According to a 2014 study published by the National Academy of Sciences, investors prefer pitches by men, particularly attractive men, to those by women, even when the content of the pitch is the same.
• The vast majority (an estimated 80%+) of public funding being spent on entrepreneurship education and early stage venture development are in male-dominated sectors like new technology, basic science, and manufacturing. Only 20% or less are spent on industries dominated by women entrepreneurs such as services and creative sectors.
• The DMZ (Ryerson’s start-up incubator program) is ranked as the 3rd best incubator in the world, has hosted over 230 startups over the past 5 years which have collectively raised $140 million in seed funding, however, only 20% of these were start-ups were led by women. The total number of women (including co-founders, staff) of these companies represent just 26% of the total.
• Ontario’s Campus-Led Accelerator and OCEA $20M+ taxpayer based funding for university and college based programs are not required to report on gender balance, and industry sources agree that gender imbalance is a significant issue in the publicly funded incubation/accelerator system.
• In Canada, women-owned enterprises make up 13.5% of all SMEs (53.8% were owned by men and the rest were co-owned). Barriers to entry (like still carrying the bulk of family caregiving duties, access to funding for slower growth enterprises, and comparable business experience are just some of those mentioned by researchers).
• Only 4% of enterprises that generate over $1 million in revenues in Canada are women-owned. Yet over 30% of women entrepreneurs are working to see their ventures grow to that level. however access to growth capital for non-Unicorn type enterprises in sectors where women entrepreneurs predominate is limited.
• Statistics show that while there is improvement, still only 4–7% of venture funding goes to women-led, VC-ready ventures.

If these statistics got your attention, and you find yourself wanting to see the entrepreneurship space re-balanced, then you are well on your way to becoming a feminist entrepreneur.

Feminist entrepreneurs are interested in examining the structural, social and cultural systems that shape the start-up and SME (small-mid-sized enterprises) space through a gender lens, and look for solutions that will help create a more inclusive, diverse, and equal opportunity space where entrepreneurial talent can thrive, regardless of gender, race, age, ability, scale, or class.

Feminist entrepreneurs also work to better the world by improving the lives of women* and girls* (* means defined in gender expansive terms) by developing new products that serve this market (for example, Lunapads, or HerSwab), and by choosing to operate their companies in line with feminist values.

Feminist values like equality, inclusion, restoration of our environment, creating resilient communities, re-thinking the distribution of caregiving plus lack of social and economic value placed on caregiving, re-framing gender identity, and the dream of realizing and unleashing massive human potential by simply the removing of cultural and social barriers, don’t just benefit women, but men as well. As Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, TedX speaker and celebrated author notes, in these times “we should all be feminists”.

So, are you one? Or a better question might be, how can you not be? 
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(Petra Kassun-Mutch is the founder and Publisher of an online magazine for feminist entrepreneurs called LiisBeth. To check it out, visit www.liisbeth.com)