How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing The World For The Better?

Changing the world has always been a women’s job. We’ve been doing it for eons. From groundbreaking innovations to saving countries and cultures, we have done it all. Remember Florence Nightingale? She revolutionized nursing care and brought mortality rates from 40% to just 2%. It was also a woman who invented the dishwasher, another who developed the method to isolate stem cells, and another innovator who created the life raft. We are also the gender that wrote the world’s first computer program.

Yet, the last few thousand years have not been very kind to my gender. Patriarchy, female infanticide, witch hunting, genocide, gender-based abuse, pay gap, – we have had to endure a lot.

Despite all these aggressions and transgressions against us, we have persisted and are thriving. Take female entrepreneurship, for example.

• Globally, every third established business is owned by a woman.
• 2% of female entrepreneurs are expected to hire six or more employees over the next 5 years. In 2019, this figure was only at 18.7%.
• In developing nations, more women are interested to become entrepreneurs instead of working for someone to achieve financial freedom.

Since we are taking the reins back, here are 5 significant ways you’ll feel the impact of having a female at the helm.

1. Women brand themselves more authentically than men

While personal branding is always highlighting the most differentiating characteristics of yourself, women tend to do it with more authenticity than men. More male-owned brands focus on a one-dimensional strategy: showcase power, authority, or leadership.

Women try to get to their roots. What truly aligns with their personality? What is that unique something inseparable from them? That nobody can take from them?

When you build a brand on such strong character-based elements, the originality shines through, because we all are different from each other. It makes sense to try to represent that through your mark instead of following what everyone else may be doing.

For this very reason, we also see a lot of diversity in female brand visuals. Sure, there are pink flowers and delicate silhouettes, but we also see female brand owners creating business logos that use a wider color base and more varied icons. From geometric marks to ethereal symbology, and from chunky wordmarks to personalized typography – female brand owners are experimenting with everything.

And for the better.

Authentic representation not only makes for consistent and solid brands but also endears you to the public. They look at you as someone with integrity, trustworthiness, and originality – someone who can celebrate their strength but also talk about their flaws with openness.

2. They are changing how we look at problems

Since always, women have excelled at the role of problem solvers. A mix of biology and social learning has enabled women to become more creative problem solvers. Compared to men, women look at the problems in their entirety, from every angle. They look at every little thing that might be contributing to the problem and figure out solutions to fix each of them. Thus, more sustainable solutions are created that work for longer.

That’s why it’s no wonder that more female entrepreneurs are launching startups that are driven by causes. But here we have a startup that goes a step forward.

Copia – a San Francisco business, under its female owner’s leadership – has given us a new angle to look at the most persistent humanitarian crisis: world hunger.

Copia doesn’t think of it as a scarcity issue – we throw away 1.3 billion tonnes of perfectly good food every year. They think it is faulty logistics.

The company addresses that by making healthy food more accessible to the community. It works as the middleman. With the help of its mobile app, it allows businesses that use food (restaurants, hotels, hospitals, etc.) to connect with Copia and schedule food donation pick-up times. Copia drivers pick up the food and deliver it to specified non-profit organizations.

The solution not only addresses hunger but also food waste. Copia also allows businesses to track how much food they have donated (that was in surplus), how best to make future food-buying decisions, and also enjoy significant tax cuts.

Not to mention the humungous goodwill you can generate among your customers telling them your business is trying to eradicate world hunger!

Also Read: 5 Challenges Female Entrepreneurs Face

3. They are fueling more business growth than men

While female-owned businesses have been joining the market at a steady pace for some years now, in recent years, it’s the growth of existing businesses that has been a great thing to watch.

Industries that have always benefited from female expertise are at the core of this growth. Healthcare, education, real estate, and other services are some markets where this growth is more focused and prominent.

One prime characteristic of business growth – job creation – shows great numbers when we look at female-led businesses. Since 2012, job creation at these businesses has grown at a steady pace of 11%, compared to only 3% among men-owned businesses.

Another criterion – profit earned – also tilts towards women-owned businesses. In the last few years, women-led businesses that generated a revenue of more than $1 million grew by 46%. The average score for all businesses for this same criteria was 12%.

Women have also been coming together to create networking and mentoring opportunities. They are also creating dedicated FinTechs that are designed to help women secure capital and raise investments. Combine all this with the rising levels of confidence in personal capabilities that women across the globe have been experiencing and these growth numbers seem like a given.

4. They are creating more innovative and nuanced products for women

Innovators, product designers, and manufacturers are famously bad at creating products for women. Take car seatbelts, for example. Most designers still use male bodies to design them. As a result, women drivers and passengers the world over have to deal with badly designed seatbelts that cut into our necks and shoulders.

But with more and more female entrepreneurs entering the market, we are seeing a new age of innovation and product design.

Bumble can be cited as a popular example. It’s a dating app with a twist: here, women message first. Instead of women waiting around passively, the app gives them the push to initiate the conversation and take back control of how they want the conversation (and relationship) to pan out.

DivaCup – the revolutionary menstrual care product is another innovation by women for women. Through this menstrual cup, the physical discomforts caused by sanitary napkins and tampons have been eliminated. Unlike a tampon, you can never run out of the cup – it’s always there, always available.

Billie – a razor brand catering to female customers is another product by a woman that doesn’t charge them the pink tax. It’s high-quality, you can sign up for a monthly subscription and is totally affordable at only $10.

Countless other examples of nuanced women-centric products show that when women design for women, the results are far superior, more comprehensive, and almost always ground-breaking.

5. Female entrepreneurs are helping women leave abusive situations

One of the many reasons female entrepreneurs are celebrated is they predominantly create more job opportunities for women. According to a research article on the subject, researchers discovered that “a company with a female founder and a female executive will hire 6x more women”.

Multiple factors could be responsible for this statistic:

• We tend to surround ourselves with people who resemble us.
• Women tend to work better in teams and collaborative environments and are thus perfectly suited for the startup culture.
• Female founders consciously make an effort to have more women on their teams to uplift their community.

Whichever reason you go with, the result is the same: with increased financial independence and security, more women feel encouraged to leave toxic, abusive relationships.

Including more women in the workforce also allows them to lift their families up and thus end generational cycles of poverty.

In India, where female entrepreneurs are growing in strong numbers, we see a shift in societal and cultural norms, too. More men are being encouraged to participate in household responsibilities and share the equal burden of the family. Rural and urban women, in increasing numbers, are considering entrepreneurship as a means to their financial freedom, leaving abusive families behind.

Also read: How New Careers Enable New Lifestyle for Women

Conclusion

The economic and social climate has never been more favorable for women to take up the entrepreneurial spirit. With more women guiding the way, young girls have strong and successful role models in how to start and establish a successful business.

While the examples of world-changing female entrepreneurs we have shared here are heartening, it would be a disservice to the cause to forget that we still have a steep and slippery hill to climb. Sure, more women are joining the workforce and more women are starting businesses but the pandemic has also been more catastrophic for female entrepreneurs than their male counterparts. Across the globe, more women-owned businesses closed down compared to men-owned.

To ensure we keep true to our course, the efforts to make women more entrepreneurial need to escalate and solidify.