In honor of International Women's Day (Mar. 8), I'm going to post these articles about women in the workplace:
Sept. 20, 2019 "Getting caught up in the business of #bossbabe": Today I found this article by Eva Voinigescu in the Star Metro:
When I quit my job as a communications specialist at a non-profit to do freelance writing and documentary work, I invested in myself by diving into the burgeoning industry of female entrepreneurs.
I purchased a web-hosting service, launched a blog to function as a portfolio and paid for Adobe Lightroom photography presets to give my photos a uniform style.
I bought day-passes to co-working spaces to rent a desk and meet fellow entrepreneurs. They handed out free totebags with such slogans as “I am very busy,” and “Do the work, get paid.”
I bought day-passes to co-working spaces to rent a desk and meet fellow entrepreneurs. They handed out free totebags with such slogans as “I am very busy,” and “Do the work, get paid.”
But pretty quickly rather than developing a network of peers to go to for advice, I felt I was being sold to by everyone I met.
managing my business finances,
improving my sales?
I could pay any one of these coworkers to teach me these skills.
While the intent of those behind the co-working spaces, entrepreneurship conferences and professional development workshops is not purposely malicious, the system appears to exist not just as a means of financial and entrepreneurial empowerment, but also to encourage women to spend more.
“Work hard so you can shop harder,” is a trending quote that I feel defines the current female entrepreneur landscape.
The world of female entrepreneurs is a massive and growing market especially among my millennial cohort.
A 2017 study by market research firm Buzz MG for Create & Cultivate (a premiere female entrepreneurship conference), found that 83 per cent of millennial women want to start their own business. A whole industry exists to help them do so.
There are $20,000 coaching groups and online courses for growing your email list or driving traffic with Pinterest, female-only conferences including Create &Cultivate and The Forbes Women’s Summit, co-working spaces such as The Wing and female only professional social networks like the one launched by media start-up Girlboss.
Terms like Girlboss and Bossbabe have become ubiquitous on social media and are meant to encourage women to own their career ambitions and success.
Despite this movement, research shows that female-led businesses still have more difficulty securing external financing than their male counterparts.
Faced with this reality, studies have found that women are more likely to take on personal credit card debt while building their business. The same Paypal study shows
70 per cent of women vs 65 per cent of men use fund business using credit cards.
This women in business report from Experian Commercial Data Sciences also shows that men seek out commercial credit more often while women tend to seek out consumer credit.
This women in business report from Experian Commercial Data Sciences also shows that men seek out commercial credit more often while women tend to seek out consumer credit.
Heading into freelance life, I had lined up a part-time contract writing web content and doing production co-ordination for a documentary producer. I knew I wanted to pitch publications and produce a podcast, but I was also open to other opportunities.
One project I took on was launching a retreat business with a friend who had been toying with the idea for years. She envisioned a series of relaxed workshops put on by a diverse group of people from our extended network: photographers, illustrators, cooks and theatre designers.
It would take place at her family’s log cabin where we’d cook meals together, go on hikes and sit by the fire.
It spoke to my interest in travel, professional development and design.
Armed with a post-grad certificate in marketing management, four years experience in advertising and communications, a stint in journalism and deep in the grips of Instagram’s one-size-fits-all template for female entrepreneurial success, I pictured the retreat as a series of highly curated creative-skill building classes facilitated by notable influencers and targeted at millennial women.
I imagined photo-ops and filters.
I saw dollar signs.
As an entrepreneur (I registered a sole proprietorship with the CRA! I got an HST number!) with an aversion to risk, the Instagram path to entrepreneurship seemed to promise guaranteed returns and the potential to grow the business:
Step 1: Create a product or experience that is visually appealing and makes social media influencers (and customers) want to share with their social networks.
Step 2: Pair this word of mouth with demographically targeted digital advertising and a few key media mentions and watch your business grow.
Step 3: Diversify by offering to teach others how you did it and charging for it.
Entrepreneurship, as it was presented online by, among others, The June Motel, The Atelier Conference, the co-working space Make Lemonade and online marketing expert Jenna Kutcher, offered a host of opportunities to female entrepreneurs ill-served by the limitations of traditional, male-dominated workplaces.
It looked like the answer to everything.
By running my own business, I could set my own goals, make my own schedule, and try innovative approaches. I wouldn’t be passed up for promotions or have to hear the phrase “this is how we’ve always done it,” ever again.
But that did not make it easy.
For every #bossbabe living the charmed life, I suspect there are 10 others who tried and failed.
The success presented by certain entrepreneurs failed to fully account for all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into building a successful business. For my partner and I that included hours of uncompensated work organizing activities, finding speakers, designing logos, booking facilitators and then we would have to hire publicists, accountants and lawyers.
To cover our bases, we signed up for a workshop, “Legal Stuff for Your Biz,” put on by a commercial lawyer at a co-working space. We learned that Ontario law sees your business partnership as binding even without paperwork. All you need is a business partner (I had one!) and an intention to make a profit (yes please!) and your personal assets are exposed to shared business liabilities.
If either my partner or I made a mistake in our business and were sued, the other person would be equally responsible. Our homes and savings were at risk.
This put into question how far I would go to pilot this business idea and spotlighted the problems that were arising as our different visions for the retreat unfolded. When we disagreed, I sometimes felt powerless. It was her idea and her cabin. Meanwhile, her full-time job and pregnancy kept her busy, so a lot of the planning power fell to me.
At times it felt like I forced my ideas on her. Making decisions together and having to compromise pushed our friendship to its limit. I learned a lot about listening and being flexible but I also considered backing out entirely to prevent the friendship’s collapse.
And yet, we persevered.
Our pilot weekend was a success. The workshops and activities ran smoothly. The almost entirely positive feedback we received helped us consider how to move forward with future iterations. Yet we decided not to do so. I realized I wasn’t committed enough to the business to take the next step — pursuing outside funding.
I enjoy participating in retreats more than running them.
I don’t see our foray into starting a business as a failure, despite the $1,500 loss we took. I learned about patience and nurturing friendship. I learned how much you have to want something to make it work.
But my biggest takeaway was not about how to do it better next time. It was about how to get better at analyzing the “why” behind my goals in the first place.
I want to have agency and pursue meaningful work but I don’t want to be a pawn in an entrepreneurship pyramid scheme that requires me to leverage the concept of female empowerment in exchange for individual success.
The way female entrepreneurship is sold, women are as much the customer as the business owner.
I wonder how many women consider this fact, versus simply getting caught up in the dream.
https://www.thestar.com/life/2019/09/20/how-i-got-caught-up-in-the-booming-business-of-bossbabe-entrepreneurship.html
https://www.thestar.com/life/2019/09/20/how-i-got-caught-up-in-the-booming-business-of-bossbabe-entrepreneurship.html
May 11, 2018 "Is the gender gap actually based on gender?": Today I found this article by Howard Levitt in the Edmonton Journal:
The #MeToo movement and the virtue-signalling of the Trudeau and Wynne governments have at least one goal in common: the elimination of Canada’s gender pay gap. Wynne in particular has passed various pieces of legislation purportedly designed to eliminate it.
Is Canada’s gender pay gap in 2018 still a product of discrimination? If not, should it be redressed, and even eliminated?
Put another way, if the gap is caused by market forces, not discrimination, would legislation seeking to eliminate it actually be harmful?
A January 2018 Stanford University study on gender and the gig economy, analyzing close to two million Uber drivers, who were selected for rides based on algorithms unrelated to gender, still found a seven per cent gender wage gap.
Half of that related to male drivers working longer hours. The other half (and who will be surprised by this?) related to the fact that males, on average, were driving faster, thereby getting to their destinations quicker and being available to pick up their next customer.
Another study issued the same month from the National Bureau of Economic Research, based on Danish data, found that almost all of the difference in wages between Danish men and women were the result of women having children. Despite 52-week paid leaves and government-subsidized daycare, the study found that the arrival of children resulted in a long-term wage gap of 20 per cent.
Over the 23 years of this study, other sources of the wage gap in Denmark had been almost eliminated but the “child penalty” stubbornly persisted. As in Denmark, North American studies have found there to be effectively no wage gap between men and women who have not had children. So is the gender wage gap actually based on gender?
I recall one female lawyer, now managing partner of another labour law firm, confiding in me that she did not expect to earn as much as her male peers because, at that time in her life, she prioritized time with her children and was not willing to work the same hours as her male peers. She believed that paying her as much as them would have been unfair.
Should government have forced her employer to pay her as much as it did her male colleagues working longer hours? If it did, would those male lawyers have continued to work as hard?
Of greater significance, if government forced employers to pay women who choose to work 9 to 5 in order to spend time with their children the same as lawyers who spend most dinners and weekend lunches at their desks, how likely would employers be to hire women of childbearing age or with young children?
As American Enterprise Institute’s Kay Hymowitz poignantly noted, after reviewing the Uber and Danish studies: “Feminists have long promised that stronger social policies would bring about gender equality. On the evidence of (this) Danish study and similar ones, they do not.
The average woman cuts back when her kids are born, regardless of whether the government offers long-term paid leave or heavily subsidized childcare. Taken together, the Uber and Danish studies provide more insight into the reality of male and female wage differences, differences that the practitioners of outrage theatre — from the U.K.’s gender gap reporting legislation to America’s Equal Pay Day — do their best to evade.”
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