Women You Can Say It, Really!

Thursday Thoughts, Money Matters, Equality for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners

As I listened to a well-produced online conference by the Women’s Business Collaborative, a global organization whose mission is, “We will not rest until there is equal position, pay, and power for all business women,” I tuned into the entrepreneurial panel portion of the event. The WBC has a range of corporate women and female business owners in their membership and I wanted to hear the conversation by a moderator and 3 panelists for my 30-year business target audience of solo and small woman owned enterprises.

By the middle of the conversation, I realized this group was speaking to newer female entrepreneurs mostly and not mature ones, like me, an almost 30-year entrepreneur who purposely choose to keep my company small. Not every woman wants to grow their companies beyond $100,000+ in sales, like most of the female entrepreneurs in the marketplace. For those who do, there is another lane, organizations specifically focused to help them on staffing, legal, financial, and other larger concerns to pursue.

I piped in the comment section because periodically someone on the panel would talk about giving or doing business with men. I get so frustrated that female organizations still suggest giving work to men when women don’t get fair compensations due to a lack of a pay equality law. What is wrong with women saying, “I’m only spending my money with women, or hiring women, until women are paid equally in all career spectrums?”

I am not discriminating against men; they get paid higher than women. They typically get more government contracts than women. They don’t have to fight as hard as women do to keep all their rights. All I wanted to say to them was “Come on, women it is okay to buy from, and hire women, first and foremost, we aren’t going to offend men, and if we do, then they’ll never truly understand what women fight for or experience and why it is so important.”

Sure bring men to the table to support women, but in the meantime if each woman spent her entire allotment of money with women entrepreneurs, female sales representatives, and hire women before men, then we might get somewhere. Until then, we’ll keep bashing our heads against a glass ceiling that won’t break. Women must be bolder and more decisive in their financial expenditures and then tout it from the rooftops moving and motivating every women to follow their lead.