Why is it important to support women in business?
Nowadays is much more common to see female entrepreneurs in our society. From Oprah Winfrey to Arianna Huffington –founder of the Huffington Post–, women throughout history have been proving their excellence and capability in business, tearing down all the expectations of their male counterparts and the world in general.
One of the oldest female figures inside the business world we could refer to, it's Sarah Breedlove, best known as Madame C. J. Walker. She was proclaimed New York's wealthiest black women, with a fortune estimated in $1,000,000, after she founded her own company "Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company.", focused on hair care products.
Of course Madame Walker is a great example of what women can achieve, and her work is hugely valuable since it all happened back in 1919. But women in general didn't start to question their role inside the business world until later in time.
The world has been telling women to stay at home and be quiet for decades. It wasn't until the 60's when women stood still and said "I can do this too". Before that, women used to go to college and drop out few months after they started, to take care of their husbands and kids, a phenomenon the wise Betty Friedan explained in her well-acclaimed book "The Feminine Mystique".
Entrepreneurship wasn't a thing you associated with women, in fact, it was the last thing you would think of when your heard the word "women". But luckily, that changed.
Females have definitely changed the way society views them. A modern example of what a women can achieve, is the CEO of the world famous brand Pepsi, Indra Nooyi. She was the CEO of PepsiCo for 12 years, and her success as a female entrepreneur inside the company was so big, that her soon-to-be dismiss saddened everyone involved.
Supporting women who are trying to make their way in the business world should be one of our main concerns as a society; we should try to make it a friendly space for them, instead of a competition where they have to prove themselves to us.
I think it's safe to say that if we support women, we mean all of them, and of course transgender women are included in that statement. As we said earlier, it is definitely not easy to be a woman in the business world, but these difficulties are greater if we talk about transgender women.
In 2016, The Atlantic interviewed a transgender woman named Vivienne Ming, an entrepreneur and theoretical neuroscientist from Berkley, California, and she spoke about her struggles inside the business world as a transgender person.
Her transition occurred during her 30's, after battling with her sexual identity for years and nearly committing suicide. She said that "gender transition it's about making yourself a better person", and that's what ultimately pushed her to pursue her career. But she admitted that people started treating her differently and they even “stopped asking her math questions overnight”, when she started her transition. That was an obvious shock for someone whose work was admired before her transition.
The key to success inside the business world is confidence, that's what Michaela Mendelsohn, CEO of Los Angeles's Pollo West Corp -another guest on The Atlantic-, assured. Michaela stated that what made her succeed in that competitive world was "finding her voice as a woman". For her, it was less of a gender thing and more of a how she presented herself into the world; that's how she accomplished so much after her transition in her 50's.
Innovation and new ideas are what make the world go around, and of course entrepreneurship has got a lot to do with it. In Latin America for instance, in the colorful Peru, women have created their own sustainable business, by crafting threads out of alpaca fur. Although this is more of an artisan example, there's a lot we could learn from these women and the people who buy their merchandise.
Support is not just about "Hey, I support you". We should visit that new store a lovely woman opened, try that lemon cake from that bakery another great lady opened. Let's not be afraid of really supporting women: buying their merchandise and visiting their workplaces, even spreading the word is key to support entrepreneur females.
Women deserve, just like any other man, to succeed.
Entrepreneurship and womanhood should be a thing we associate more often every day. There's a misconception of what women should and shouldn’t do, and to change that, we need to make them feel safe in areas where hostility is a common denominator.
Women like Madam Walker aren't as unusual as everyone thinks, they are must likely waiting to be noticed, so it’s our duty to make them shine and achieve everything their capable of.