Why I Stopped Calling Myself a ‘Female Founder’
Let’s stop pretending it’s empowering.
For a long time, my LinkedIn headline and Twitter profile had me down as a ‘female founder’. I’ll be honest, the decision to adopt that label was mostly inspired by the fact that many female business leaders did the same. I was a woman, and I was an entrepreneur, and the alliteration sounded punchy. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time — but it was.
I was making a statement (and hadn’t fully thought it through).
As something of a Jill-of-all-trades, I juggle multiple labels regarding what it is that I ‘do’. I’m also a writer, documentary filmmaker, and occasional social scientist — but it’s only my role as an entrepreneur that invited the explicit mention of my gender.
Why was it important to highlight that I was a female founder? Did it have any relevance to the nature of my job, or my ability to do it?
No. Not at all. So why was it there, so conspicuously on display?
After some soul-searching and online digging, I consulted my entrepreneurial network. There seemed to be an agreement that the ‘female founder’ designation was partly a celebration of doing something that was traditionally out of bounds for many women. It was empowering, a way to stand boldly in a once exclusively male space and say, ‘hey, it’s our turn now’. It was also about visibility, sending a signal to encourage other women about what is possible.
I stand by all of that… but I worry about the trade-off.
Are we inadvertently asking to be treated differently?
The importance of framing
The way we are described — by ourselves and others — reflects and reinforces the underlying balances of power that exist in society. Seemingly innocent choices in language can completely transform how we perceive something (or someone).
Linguists and social scientists refer to this as framing.
“Frames are mental structures that change the way we see the world” — George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant!
Framing occurs when we draw attention to certain aspects of a situation, issue, or person. We’re told what is most important about a subject, so we can interpret complex, ambiguous phenomena more simply. For example, an individual could be framed as either a freedom fighter or a terrorist; the choice of label will likely strongly influence how they’re perceived and treated.
‘Female founder’ doesn’t seem too extreme, but what about sister terms like ‘girl boss’ or ‘she-EO’? Girl boss is obviously problematic. It’s infantilising, for a start: a girl is a child. It’s not a frame that invites us to take the subject seriously: it’s cutesy, cringeworthy, and grammatically incorrect.
Is calling ourselves ‘female founders’ — or ‘women in business’ — much better? I don’t think so. All of these labels draw attention to the exceptionality of our presence in the world of entrepreneurship. They create an immediate distinction: a female founder is not a standard founder. Note, we never talk about male founders or boy bosses, so the distinction is between us, and what is ‘the norm’. The women’s football league is not the football league.
The subtle, seemingly innocent use of language sends a message that we are unusual, perhaps secondary.
“She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other.’“ — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Even if they’re meant to be empowering, gendered qualifiers serve to reinforce the idea that it’s a man’s world first. They undermine the achievements of women, and frame them as inherently different from those of men.
In reality, 1 in 3 entrepreneurs here in the UK are female, as are 40% of American business owners — so we’re not really that exceptional in terms of statistics. We’re not the majority, but we’re not a tiny minority either. And yet, it’s not unusual to see blog posts and news articles introduce women entrepreneurs with the ‘female founder’ label, even when gender is not a part of the story being told.
A different journey
Where female founders are perhaps exceptional are the added hurdles we have to overcome on our journeys to success. The experience of female founders is often very different from that of male founders. This is most obvious when it comes to investment. In the UK, a shocking 89% of venture capital funding goes to all-male founding teams. Around 10% goes to mixed-gender teams, while all-female teams receive less than 1%. Read that again. The most likely explanatory factor? 83% of VC firms have no women in their investment committees, where final decisions are made.
Things aren’t any better in the US, where female founders receive only 2.8% of total startup investment.
The world’s two largest start up ecosystems are seriously failing women.
(Side note: it’s not only women who face additional challenges. Only 13% of ethnic minority-led businesses are able to secure VC or Angel funding in the UK; in the US, Black and Latinx founders receive only 2.4% of VC investments).
As a female entrepreneur, you’re also up against the subtle (and not so subtle) discrimination that persists everywhere else in modern society. Sadly, almost two-thirds of women face everyday sexism and racism at work.
My journey as a founder has so far been largely positive, but the microaggressions have been there — especially in the highly technical space we operate in. People have cut me out of email chains, talked over me during calls, or ignored me entirely in favour of my male co-founder. I have been asked probing, irrelevant questions about my personal life by potential investors and partners. I’ve been spoken down to and belittled in a way my co-founder has not.
I’ve also found myself being hyper-aware aware of my tone and body language, out of fear that too much strength or assertiveness might paint me as ‘bossy’ or ‘emotional’. (This sexist double standard is another example of how language is tactically deployed to put women down).
I suppose my femaleness has been a large part of my journey as an entrepreneur, whether I wanted it to be or not.
There have been good sides to this, though. I’ve joined groups for female founders — for community, support, and a space safer from prejudice. I’ve also been part of programmes and initiatives designed to support female founders (and other traditionally underrepresented groups). These have been incredibly helpful, but they too can be a double-edged sword. There are those who will use them to reduce your successes to your gender — to tokenism or positive discrimination. Your femaleness is then, paradoxically, an unfair advantage.
… it’s complicated
As with any application of language, the cultural power politics of a phrase is derived from how and when it’s used. There are times when ‘female founder’ is entirely innocent, acting as an essential signifier that’s relevant to the situation — think of a funding opportunity for diverse founders, or an article talking about the unique experiences of female founders in the tech world. But what about an article that focusses on a company’s financial news, and pointedly refers to their leader as a female founder?
If you’re drawing attention to a founder’s gender in a context where you wouldn’t if they were male, it becomes a problem.
Ultimately, if female entrepreneurs are truly different from male entrepreneurs, it’s because our journeys are often harder. We’re still coming up against historical and contemporary prejudices that make many of us feel like we have to fight harder to be here. Changing our language won’t magically level the playing field, but perhaps it’s a step in the right direction.
Imposter syndrome also is endemic in the entrepreneur population as a whole; most of us already struggle with self-doubt. Does bringing attention to the unusualness of our gender add fuel to the fire? Or is it a badge of honour, a rallying battle cry?
Does the term ‘female founder’ challenge the status quo, or simply reinforce it?
In either case, it’s a loaded term — one to think twice about.
The way we talk about ourselves matters, but it’s ultimately an entirely personal choice. Maybe the real power of these phrases lies in how they make us feel, on an individual level.
In my case, I’ve decided simply to call myself a founder.
