Our start-up business aims to address the issue of workplace violence (verbal, psychological, physical, sexual) against women.
The creation of Women’s Voice stemmed from the merging of three ideas from the founders. Dora Fetter had the idea to create an application or platform for female journalists and the documentation of violence incidents. Eleni Vardaki proposed that our start-up take the form of a podcast, while Sofia Pitsineli envisioned an application that would allow all women from various occupational sectors and socio-economic backgrounds to share instances of incompatible behavior experienced in their workplace. Thus, Women’s Voice was created, an application for all working women, which, in addition to documenting incidents, provides legal and psychological support, as well as monthly podcast releases based on collective research on the incidents.
Why we chose the specific topic
It is important to note that domestic violence against women is a pan-European phenomenon. However, we noticed that little attention is given to workplace violence. It should also be clarified that our goal is not to accuse the male gender of perpetrating violence against women, nor to conceal incidents of violence against men. The fact is that women also perpetrate violence against other women, and men are recipients of violence (verbal, psychological, physical). However, due to men’s physical stature and societal privilege, such incidents are not often heard of, or if they occur, they have the power to defend themselves. It should be emphasized that we are clearly referring to biological sex and not sexual orientation because it is also essential for the LGBTQ community to have a reliable initiative to report incidents of violence.
Based on the above data, we conducted research to see if there is any similar application or platform, i.e., an initiative that protects women in the workplace without them having to remain exposed if they react, fear dismissal, or simply do not report and remain in a job that harms their mental and physical health.
What does Women’s Voice cover that other applications do not
It is a fact that in today’s dynamic technological landscape, there are many applications that offer psychological support services, or podcasts that educate on individual rights and laws, or many independent groups on social media making a simple but significant effort to report incidents of violence. Women’s Voice brings together all these ideas and creates a collective application. Each working woman, or a colleague, or a loved one, will have the opportunity to write the incident in the application.
Then, Women’s Voice will provide a team of specialized lawyers and psychologists to assess the incident or be available to assist the person making the report, which can be done anonymously or using a username/nickname. This is exactly the gap/white space that our idea covers, namely, in one single application, a working woman or someone close to her has the opportunity to report the incident in writing and anonymously, and depending on its severity, there is already a team of lawyers or psychologists ready to assist them. Additionally, all these stories will be compiled into a monthly informative podcast, informing the public not registered on the platform about violence incidents, the solutions we offer, and statistical research on workplace violence.
The reason we chose the European community
Our idea started to take action in European territory. This decision was made because the European Union is a more controlled space for us to observe the progress of our enterprise and to provide clearer and more direct solutions due to the similarity of the countries. It is characteristic that a woman in India is treated differently from a woman in the Czech Republic, and for this reason, if Women’s Voice were to take global action, it would be necessary to tailor it to the data of each country and culture. For this reason, we continue our pilot action in the European Union, while it is noteworthy that each country will have the option to use its native language. We continue to hope for the use of the Women’s Voice application on a global scale.
Business analysis: How Women’s Voice operates
Our key partners who help us to make our organization work are psychologists or psychiatrists, advocates, organizations that deal with women’s rights, and our key suppliers are basically women, who are affected by bullying at work, they provide the information and data. We are acquiring resources from our partners such as psychological assistance and the necessary expertise from psychologists, legal aid from lawyers, and transfer of experience from women’s organizations.
Our partners perform different activities. Psychologists or psychiatrists usually treat chronic and less chronic patients with mental illnesses, helping to navigate the patient through the maze of everyday difficulties. The advocates are representing the person concerned in a possible court case, advising on critical issues concerning legal problems. And women’s organizations stand up for women’s rights by lobbying, speaking up and helping. They fight to end patriarchal society, and they try to make changes, our main goal is very similar.
To ensure a successful outcome, we want to reach our target audience in different ways, online and live as well. On virtual channels such as social media sites, like Instagram we would like to focus on our mission and services. Participation in forums or in groups can also help to find our customers — on these events we can promote our idea. It would be also great to collaborate with known women from different backgrounds. The key to social media content is to make it as easy to understand, shareable and reflective of our mission as possible.
Keeping in touch and maintaining ongoing interest is very important, which is why we send regular newsletters to interested participants, in these newsletters we inform our users about new products, services and events. It is also worth cooperating with larger organizations, with professionals who also deal with women’s issues and women’s rights. Examples include the EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, the Onassis Stegi Cultural Centre, the Niarchos Foundation and the Womentors Program from Lampraki Institution.
The EMST Gallery for example is celebrating women’s art this season with a series of group and solo exhibitions honoring pioneering female artists. The Onassis Stegi often hosts special panel discussions about issues related to women, for example in 2020 they had a special event on 25th of November, which is also the International Day for the Elimination Against Violence Against Women. The event was a part of a project: 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which ended on Human Rights Day on 10 December. It’s really important to highlight the effect of the Lampraki Foundation’s project. In order to fully take control of their lives in relation to their economic activity, the public and political space at their disposal, the balancing of work and personal time, the protection of their rights at work and in all areas of their lives and health, WOMENTORS is a programme that aims to empower young women in many ways through education and capacity building. We can connect to this idea, that’s why we were inspired by them in many ways.
Business analysis: Our funding plan
Our funding is made up of several different components. We need a specific plan for public funding, and to achieve this goal we have to contact the gender equality secretariat and other government agencies to consider public funding options. It is also necessary to search for private sponsors, such as private agencies and organizations which are interested in equity and social justice issues. We should consider creating corporate programs and grants. We also want to create a donation system, that’s how the independent supporters can help us.
These are more personal ways of support, such as micro-donations, crowdfunding and also volunteer’s work, which also means a lot when it comes to helping people. We try to find a way to partner with health and mental health organizations that may be willing to provide their services for free or at a reduced cost to your audience. It is also essential to drawing up contracts with professional psychologists and lawyers that clearly define the terms of payment and terms of cooperation. At last, we have to create a social enterprise model, where our business can provide services for free, but funding comes from corporate agreements and public funding.
Our sales strategy consists of three main points. As we mentioned, we are planning to organize events and seminars on women’s empowerment for which payment will be required to provide proof of attendance. We also created a system for subscription fees, which is basically a revenue generated by selling access to a continuous service for example Spotify. We also want to offer free trial periods for our services so we can gain customers’ trust hopefully.
We are creating value for women (employees and possible witnesses) who are in a vulnerable position in the workplace and suffer harassment of any kind. We also bring value to companies that have not been able to create a pro-woman, protective system in the workplace on their own. Our most important customers are of course women who have suffered abuse of any kind at work. It’s hard to define our customer archetypes, because abuse does not depend on the age of the person who has suffered it, so it is not worth making an age determination.
Business analysis: Our target group
Our target group is the women who are in trouble and find help with us. Once you have your customers, the most important thing is to keep them, so here’s how. Ideally, grotesquely, it would be best if the world could change so much that there would be no more bullying in the workplace — although we would lose our customers, we would live in a better world and probably focus on a different social problem instead. We have also established a unique customer relationship: we need to provide a safe atmosphere, a safe place for the women concerned to talk about their problems, to talk about the grievances they have suffered.
Women’s Voice Persona
In order to determine the possible consumer categories for our startup, Women’s Voice, our team performed a thorough investigation. We feel that our services would be beneficial to a number of important client personas that we discovered through our study. However, we would like to introduce one of our customers who suffered from abuse in her workplace, and wasn’t afraid to ask for help. For the sake of anonymity, we changed the name of the victim.
Julia was harassed by her co-worker at a multinational company. She was groped under a table at a conference at her workplace. The harasser had already given her unwanted sexual attention for a few years. Julia told the president of the association, who said, “You wouldn’t believe how many women he’s run off over the years.” She tried to get help from other colleagues, but the situation got worse. She found our organization through her best friend, that’s how she found a psychologist and a legal advisor at our platform. She wrote a review of her story, and we created her profile according to her experiences.
The problem we solve
Although we live in a theoretically modern society, it is unfortunately not a few times that women in the workplace are confronted with inappropriate behavior, both verbal and physical violence. Many working women hesitate to report such incidents for fear of being fired. According to the website Social Europe, when it comes to workplace violence, women and frontline workers are disproportionately victims.
This includes bullying, harassment, violence, verbal abuse or threats and unwanted sexual attention. In general, such “workplace violence” can have significant health effects — mental (exhaustion, burnout, anxiety, and depression) as well as physical. Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Telephone Survey 2021 looked at social behavior in the workplace. The EWCTS is a high-quality, probability-based survey that presents the experiences of more than 70,000 workers in 36 countries. For all forms of adverse social behavior covered, the gender gap is particularly striking when it comes to unwanted sexual attention. Women are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from it than men. On average, 12.5 percent of workers in the European Union experienced some form of antisocial behavior at work in 2021. However, the proportion of women who experienced it was consistently higher than that of men.
Our goal is that with this application every woman or her colleague can report the incident they are suffering, without fear. To achieve this, by creating a safe environment, every woman who wants to share her story is given the opportunity to do so anonymously. In order to effectively help every woman who chooses to contact us, we work with 6 psychologists and 6 legal advisors (3 for Greek language and 3 for English, since we are addressing an international audience).
Difficulties and Solutions
Since we wanted our services to be provided free of charge to the women who chose us, a major issue we had to sort out was funding. Here are the strategies we came up with to fix this particular issue:
1) Public Funding: Contact with the gender equality secretariat and other government agencies to consider public funding options. (we need a specific plan)
2) Private Sponsors: Contact with private agencies and organizations interested in equity and social justice issues. We should consider creating corporate programs and grants.
3) Donations: Create a donation system for supporters who wish to contribute more.
4) Partnerships with Healthcare Agencies: Partner with health and mental health organizations that may be willing to provide their services for free or at a reduced cost to your audience.
5) Drafting of Contracts: Drawing up contracts with professional psychologists and lawyers that clearly define the terms of payment and terms of cooperation.
6) Social Enterprises: Create a social enterprise model, where our business can provide services for free, but funding comes from corporate agreements and public funding.
Another issue we had to deal with was how the user will be able to easily find the right psychologist and legal advisor through our company, without having to turn to a private person they don’t know or to some other platform. For this reason, let’s create a separate section on our website entitled support, in which the user can find the following by clicking on it:
1) A comprehensive profile will be created for each, outlining their expertise, personal approach, and other important information.
2) Based on their profile, each woman will choose the one that corresponds to her situation.
3) Then, they will contact the psychologist/lawyer either by phone or email to arrange the first session.
4) The user can share her experience by leaving a review, thus giving us feedback and helping other users in their choice.
Having settled the basic financial issues for the smooth running of our business, we had to see how we would advertise ourselves so that the world would know us and trust us. Considering that most companies today advertise mainly through online channels, we chose to move in this way as well. We want to focus on our online presence, through all social media platforms (instagram, facebook, tiktok, X, Spotify) and creating our website. We wanted our social profiles and content to focus on our mission & services to make our identity and vision clear.
Here are our chosen advertising strategies:
1) Events/ Contests: Participation in forums/groups and communities related to the journalism industry to promote our company.
2) Influence: Collaborations with known women from different backgrounds.
3) Content: Sharable content that reflects our values and mission.
4) Stay in Touch: Newsletters that inform our users about new products, services and events.
5) Organizations & Institutions (we would like to work with): @yperoxes_gynaikes, EMST, Onasis Stegi, Niarchos Foundation, Womentors Programm
Here are our chosen sales strategy:
1) Events and Seminars: Seminars on women’s empowerment for which payment will be required to provide proof of attendance
2) Subscription fees: Revenue generated by selling access to a continuous service: e.g. Spotify
3) Free Trials Offer: Free trial periods for our services so we can gain customers’ trust.
4) Organize events or promotional campaigns to increase awareness and sales.
What we learn from the whole process
The creation of this particular start-up was a special journey for the 3 of us. First of all, we had the opportunity to work together for the first time, the 3 of us, seeing how well a team could function when it has a common vision and philosophy. We knew that the situation in the working environment for women is not easy, but we did not realize how bad the situation was. By conducting a short survey through Instagram, we found that the majority of European women, regardless of country or age, have experienced inappropriate behavior in their work environment.
Through this whole process we understood that a good idea is not enough to bring results, as we had to solve key issues to ensure the viability of our business. The business world is difficult but also very interesting. We understood that in today’s time the difference is made by the tools you choose to use, but mainly how you manage to easily and quickly communicate your purpose to the public.
Let’s stay in touch
Instagram: @womens.voice_
Website: women’s voice
Spotify: Women’s Voice / episode 1 (greek version & english version)
Thank you
Professor: Betty Tsakarestou
Team: fetter.dora, Elvardaki
