Women entrepreneurs tend to be stuck at the lower end of the business value chain, while their male counterparts make more profits at the high end. The ILO has developed a five step model to help women cross the business gender divide.

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Walk through any town or village in my home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and you’ll see a multitude of hairdressing businesses, most of them run by women. They are mainly plaiting, cutting and styling but this is not where the real money is made. Their businesses remain on a plateau, never really moving forward.

Then you find small factories producing the hair products used by these women entrepreneurs. In most cases, the factories are owned and run by men, who have found a way to tap into more lucrative segments of the chain.

You see this business gender divide in many parts of the world, where women are stuck in the lower ends of the value chain or where they are concentrated in traditionally female, low income sectors.

Take Somalia for instance, in my role as lead technical officer of the ILO’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Development (WED) team, I have spent time with Somali business women, who are working in the dairy chain. They may own one or two cows and sell the milk in the market or on the streets of the capital Mogadishu. Most do not think of moving into other more profitable businesses, partly because milk production is often handed down in the family and is seen as a woman’s traditional role.

I’ve also met entrepreneurs working in Somalia’s more profitable renewable energy sector, which is dominated by men, most of whom would not consider working in the dairy sector because it’s seen as ‘women’s work’.

Our aim in the WED team is to help women ‘add value’ to businesses they may already own in essential and female dominated sectors, and to encourage them enter more lucrative sectors, often growth-oriented and male-dominated. We have developed a five-point business upgrading model to help make this happen:

• Identify and assess the best sectors where women can establish and grow their businesses. This includes sectors where women already have a significant presence, and those that are traditionally male-dominated, which women can be encouraged to enter.
• Deliver tailored business support, including entrepreneurship trainings, business continuity management, and soft skills training that cater for women’s and men’s needs. By working with local business support organizations, we ensure that these services sustain and remain available even after projects have ended.
• Help business women access markets by working with government and the private sector to promote hiring and purchasing policies that benefit and include women owned and led enterprises; and by helping women entrepreneurs succeed in bidding processes, equipping them with market information, and supporting them to meet standards and requirements.
• Make finance easier to access by connecting women entrepreneurs with different financing options, including conventional financial institutions, as well as less conventional financing mechanisms, such as impact investors.
• Strengthen women entrepreneurs’ voice and representation by building peer-to-peer support networks, and facilitating their participation in key associations and platforms. Through soft-skills development and strengthened networks, the aim is also to empower and encourage women entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and enter and succeed in male-dominated sectors.

Existing inequities have been magnified during the economic troubles, business leaders say.

Photo Credit: AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post,

Article By Judith Kohler of The Denver Post

Alicia Scott inspects her roof on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. Alicia Scott, founder and CEO of Roots to Roof, is a member of an organization started by the company Just Fearless to help women stay in business.

Alicia Scott went from answering phones and doing the filing at a roofing company to being a production manager and then a vice president. She then struck out on her own.

“A couple of years ago, I decided I had enough working crazy hours and being the first one in and the last to leave,” Scott said. “I decided that it was time to make a change, so I started my own company.”

Scott, who lives in Golden, started Roots to Roofs in 2017, offering landscaping and exterior construction services. Her staff grew to eight full-time employees, but has been cut in half since the coronavirus pandemic exploded. The company’s revenue has dropped by 40%.

“We’ve tightened up ship quite a bit. We’re not taking on any marketing, stuff like that,” said Scott, when asked if she thinks her company can hang on. “But it’s been difficult.”

Weathering the pandemic has been rough for many businesses, but a recent report released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said female-owned small businesses have been disproportionately affected. A survey by Ipsos found that the businesses were more likely than those owned by men to report a significant decline in the health of their business since the pandemic started. They were also less likely to be planning new investments for the coming year.

Before the pandemic, 67% of the male owners described the overall health of their business as “somewhat or very good,” compared to 60% of female-owned businesses. In July, 62% of male owners still described their businesses that way, while only 47% of female owners did.

“When you look at the broader context, it is a giant alarm bell,” said Tom Sullivan, vice president for small-business policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

That’s because over the last five years, female-owned businesses, about 42% of the small businesses nationwide, saw their employment grow 8%, compared to just 1.8% for all businesses, according to a 2019 report by American Express. The number of female-owned small businesses increased 21% during that period compared to 9% for businesses overall.

Sullivan said it’s troubling to see the fast-growing segment of the small-business economy losing steam.

There are 139,760 female business owners in Colorado, accounting for 39.8% of all business owners in the state, according to a new report by Self Financial, which helps build and improve credit. Colorado has the 14th-highest percentage of female business owners.

The pandemic has magnified inequities faced by minority- and female-owned businesses, like access to loans and other capital, Sullivan said. Compounding the challenges is that many female-owned businesses, such as retail shops and hair salons, rely on foot traffic and are more vulnerable when restrictions are imposed.

More federal help is needed, Sullivan said. The chamber is pushing for bipartisan support for more stimulus funding.

Kisha Mays, founder and CEO of Just Fearless and an angel investor, said she believes it’s a matter of when, not if, Congress approves more money to help businesses cope with the pandemic.

“But that next bill of coronavirus relief won’t happen at least until maybe February 2021,” Mays said. “And you still have Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s — three months essentially. How are these businesses that need help now supposed to wait for three months and hope they’ll get help?”

So, Mays, whose company works with primarily female-owned businesses, sped up a grant program that was in the works. One of her ventures, HERstory Connections, a support network for female entrepreneurs, closed the first round of applications for $5,000 grants and expects to open another.

“It might help them pay rent for a month or two. It might help them make payroll,” Mays said.

Her long-term goal is to see 1 million female business founders produce a minimum of $1 million in annual revenue by the end of 2025. Mays said less than 2% of female-owned businesses now generate at least seven figures in annual revenue.

“We start businesses at a faster rate than men but we get funded at a slower rate,” Mays said. “And now you see them struggling.”

Scott, the roofing company owner, didn’t apply for a grant or other funding but has turned to women’s business organizations, including HERstory, for support, networking, training sessions and other resources.

“Just having someone to talk with and connect with, to be able to get through whatever challenges we’re going through, that’s been really big for me.”

Click Here for the Link to Denver Post Article

In October, the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to two women, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing called CRISPR. This is the first time two women have won this prestigious prize and is a timely signal of the growing role women play in health-related fields. 

While specific data is hard to find, anecdotal evidence seems to show more women are founding or leading efforts in the healthcare and life sciences industries. And even though women still lag men in the percentage of healthcare leadership roles, with only 13% serving as CEOs and 30% being part of C-suite teams, they tend to be better represented at the top versus in other sectors like financial services or technology. 

Lygeia Ricciardi, Chief Transformation Officer of Carium attributes some of this larger role to simple volume. Given that women make 80% of the healthcare buying decisions in the United States and make up 65% of the healthcare workforce, she says it’s “only natural that we have strong opinions and insights into how to make it better.” And she sees lots of room for improvement, pointing to the opportunity to help people – especially women – use digital tools to better manage and improve their health. 

Astarte Medical cofounder and CFO Tammi Jantzen echoes this point. “Women are the Chief Medical Officers of the home. It only makes sense that more women are leading companies in healthcare – they know their customer because they are their customer.” Jantzen also believes that as discussions about women’s issues like sexual and reproductive health become less taboo, more female entrepreneurs are seeking solutions.

Perhaps this helps explain the sudden and explosive growth of what’s been termed femtech. This subcategory of healthtech focuses on approaches and solutions for women’s health issues. At least $241 million in venture capital funding flowed to this sector in 2019 alone, with Frost & Sullivan projecting a market potential of $50 billion by 2025.

Click HERE to read the Rest of the Article.

Confidence was created by Gabby Goodwin, the youngest ever to receive the South Carolina Entrepreneur of the Year and Black Enterprise Teenpreneur of the Year.

She is a young teen who solved the Age Old Problem of disappearing hair barrettes by inventing Gabby Bows. With guidance from her mother, she created the first patented double face and double snap barrette.

She also created a girls natural hair products to make styling easier. Let's show some support for this incredible young entrepreneur who has built a Six Figure business by the time she was 13!

Check out more details at www.gabbybows.com

We Are So Excited to Announce Our New Business Grant to Get Critical Funding to Female Founded and Owned Businesses , Who Are HERstory Connections Members, Quickly.

Click HERE to Apply Today

Congratulations to our HERstory Connections VIP Gold Member, Jennifer Vollbrecht for winning the annual Melissa Washington Small Business Awards.

Jennifer is the Founder and CEO of J. Vollbrecht Consulting Inc. The focus on excellent project delivery, project management, process development, project controls and risk management. Their objective is to always meet and exceed client expectations through effective use of expert teams, streamlined processes and utilizing technology to achieve the best possible outcome for projects.

The founder of the SheWorks! and Transparent Business shares its experience and the key for women entrepreneurs to obtain financing for their startups.

Silvina Moschini is CEO and founder of SheWorks! A platform that connects professional women with companies around the world, in the same way, allows them to work remotely and in flexible hours that adjust to their needs and is president of Transparent Business , a remote work team management platform.

While many companies suddenly had to make the transition to remote work in the wake of the pandemic, she already had the advantage of using the necessary software to have people working in a virtual and organized way. "We don't have offices, we never had them and we won't have them," Moschini says.

“Transparent Business is a company that is already worth 500 million dollars today, and by the end of the year we are going to do what is called a mini IPO, a public offering of shares that will take the company to be worth a trillion or 1,000 million, It is as we say, this is going to be at the end of the year. Next year our goal is to carry a large IPO, from $ 10 billion to $ 10 trillion, ”says the entrepreneur.

The challenges women face when undertaking

The businesswoman says that the term "unicorn" corresponds to being able to achieve a larger company and "pink" attributes it to the female leadership style, hence the term pink unicorn.

“It is much more difficult for women to undertake because it is a great challenge for us to make companies that are truly great, among other things because it is very difficult to get capital. In addition to the fact that there are a lot of other factors that make it not very easy for women or we do not get involved in projects that have to do with cove ventures, many times we go for smaller and more beautiful projects, linked to more initiatives. girls, less scalable stuff, and the pink unicorn concept is precisely a $ 1 billion company at least, ”explains Moschini.

Nowadays, it is becoming very fashionable, because traditionally the male leadership style is linked to a tougher, more assertive issue and in times of crisis, women contribute in more inclusive, conversational and participatory ways.

To Read the Rest of the Article CLICK HERE.

Check out Flourish and Flounce Founder Candice Munson, one of our VIP Gold Members.

Flourish & Flounce has been a labor of love to add style to your home while taking away the stress and pressure of the design process. Today’s fast paced, modern families deserve as much time to soak up every special moment.

Each season, they release various original table top designs to spice up your dining room table that you can purchase one time or order as a yearly subscription.

Here's to women entrepreneurs changing the world one city at a time!

Live Your Dash: Make Every Moment Count

Written by: Linda Ellis

Genre: Non-Fiction - Inspirational

Available on: Amazon and Everywhere Books Are Sold

Website: https://lindaellis.life/

Book Summary:

In 1996, an announcer read Linda's Ellis's poem "The Dash" aloud on a syndicated radio program -- and, to her surprise, it became an instant, meteoric success. Calls came in from people around the country eager to tell Linda how her words had touched their hearts. That was the beginning of an enduring phenomenon.

"I read of a man who stood to speak, At the funeral of a friend,  He referred to the dates on her tombstone,

From the beginning to the end, He noted that first came the date of her birth, And spoke the following date with tears,

But he said what mattered most of all Was the dash between those years."

Bio on the Author: 

Linda Ellis started writing poems as a child, a talent inherited from her Irish grandmother. She spent years working in the corporate world, but made the decision to leave it behind and pursue her dream of becoming a writer. Her poetry has been featured in bestselling books and magazines such as Family Circle, US News and World Report, and other major publications. Her poems have also appeared on local television and hundreds of radio programs, including Radio Delilah. She lives in Georgia.

Her books and products have sold hundreds of thousands and her latest book, Live Your Dash (Sterling Publishing, 9/2011) captures and expands upon the theme of the original poem: It's not your birth or death that matters most, but how you spend each passing year. Linda shares her message of joy, hope, and positive energy through uplifting stories, essays, and poetry, along with tales of people who have been "touched by the dash," including Bob Dole, legendary football coach Lou Holtz, and American Idol winner David Cook. The book and speaking program surrounding it, represent an inspiring look at life based on the fantastically successful poem.

Linda Ellis