Women in the workplace have always faced a huge range of challenges. But the challenges for female entrepreneurs can be extremely complex. As many of us know, women have faced many issues in the workplace in past like pay inequality and opportunity inequality just to name a few. Therefore, today I am going to highlight some of the struggles that women Entrepreneurs struggle with.
Limited Funding
For any business, having the right amount of funding to get the ball rolling on your next fantastic business idea is critical to building your dream company. And without these initial finances, your dream will be over before it’s even started. The good news is that when you have these funds, there will be plenty of help available to you, from places like Early Growth (learn more here) who can help you when it comes to sorting out your taxes and day-to-day accounting. This expertise will be invaluable when it comes to making your business a success. But none of this will be possible if you don’t have the necessary funds. Unfortunately, many women struggle to gain funding because they often do not have as many assets in their name on average, as men do. This can make it difficult to fight for those competitive loan rates that you need to build your business from the ground up.
Many women have taken to unconventional means of funding their business since they struggle to get similar opportunities from banks. Some have found that crowdfunding is a great way to get a product off the ground that otherwise would be impossible to get funding for. You still must create content and a marketing campaign to generate the buzz around your product though and this is not cheap either.
Work-life Balance
Women, across the world, are expected to deal with more housework and family duties than men are in most societies. This can be a massive challenge when you want to start a vent cleaning business or one of any other nature. Most women entrepreneurs we know today had to overcome such limitations in order to succeed in what they are doing. Oftentimes, family duties are time-consuming enough but when you add starting a business to the mix it can be an insane workload. For advice on starting a business and then subsequently improving it, you may want to read some of the articles hosted over on the Tier Bella website for some inspiration.
This is one of the many things that discourage women in general from starting a business that has a family. They feel like they will become overworked and will end up hating what they worked so hard to build. This is especially the case for working mothers who must work twice as hard when they are raising children.
The same kind of support often is not shown to entrepreneurial women from their social circles either. This can be painful because starting a business requires so much support. The amazing contributions people bring into the world from businesses are often the product of massive teams of talented people working on a problem together. Creating systems and trying to get something so complex like that off the ground like be incredibly taxing.
Having a business mentor can offset some of the stress and confusion but since fewer women are in business in general. It can be difficult to find the right female entrepreneur that can give you the right guidance. We are all different after all and need alternative approaches in the world of business to carve out the businesses we want to create.
Tough Competition against male counterparts
Entrepreneurship is often a male dominated field and while this is changing, change is slow. We all still have a long way to go. The business community is built around most leaders being men. When you think of business leaders that could inspire you, you might think of Richard Branson, Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos. The fact that there is so little female representation in the higher end of female entrepreneurship can be disheartening.
Because of this community the opportunities generally favour the situations men find themselves in based on their expected roles in society. While social progress is slow it is being made though. We are seeing more powerful women building their own businesses, becoming great leaders by learning some of the important elements of sound leadership, and making fantastic contributions to the business community but there is still more to do.
To conclude, women entrepreneurs face different challenges to their male counterparts. This can be discouraging for those that aspire to run a business. But just because there are things getting in the way it does not mean women will give up. The female business community is growing every day, so I am optimistic about what the future holds for business minded women.