Equality Starts With Us

The opportunity to connect with thousands of women through The Female Founder Collective and my podcast Superwomen was one of the most rewarding parts of my last decade. I’d long craved a community I could turn to who uniquely understood my reality, whilst also wanting to elevate those women, their businesses, and stories. 

We launched The Collective to harness our agency as a community to empower women socially and economically, and as we embark on the next decade, are reflecting on the number of opportunities we each have to create a more equal world. 

Wherever you are, you can affect change. It starts with intentionally examining your daily choices and developing a conscious awareness of how you can use your actions to advance your values.

Picture your life as a set of concentric circles: You have your personal life at the center, then your professional one, your community, country, and more. We’ll focus on the first two since they offer a range of actions we can begin taking today. 

Personally, a simple way to begin is to take stock of your weekly purchases. Where do you buy your coffee? Your food? Your clothing? Start there. 

One of our theses at The FFC is: How can we affect change as consumers rather than relying on corporations? We can vote with our dollars, as we do with many other causes. 

We’re in the process of developing a directory of women-owned businesses to make it easy to shop from the 12 million of them in the United States (with 1,800 more being founded every day). For now, you can look for the FFC seal on over 2.5 million products, and know that being intentional about something as simple as where you buy your coffee can make a real difference not just for that company but for solving critical parts of the equality equation. Take closing the pay gap. Fifty women making $20 million at Fortune 50 companies is progress but will only shift the mean, not the median. By supporting the 12 million women-owned businesses - and the 9 million people they employ - we can help tighten the gap sustainably.

Now, we can expand to the next circle: Your professional life. Most of us work at companies where there are likely numerous opportunities to help foster a more diverse workplace and world. 

Start by looking around. How would you assess gender equality at your company? Dig a level deeper than statistics, like equal pay and representation, and examine the details, like your pipeline and parental leave policies. How can you be a leader here? Raise your hand, and set up a meeting with your manager or head of H.R. to discuss creating a more equal workplace. 

Perhaps you plan events. Why not suggest allocating part of your budget to women and minority-led companies? When you consider the amount of money your corporation, and organizations more broadly, spend annually, you can see how dramatically your contribution can influence small businesses. Of the 12 million women-owned companies, only 1.7% surpassed a million dollars in revenue in 2018. A collective effort to invest in female entrepreneurs can change that, as well as improve society, as women invest back into their families and communities. 

Investment funding is disproportionate for women-led businesses, with only 2.2% of venture capital dollars going to female founders in 2018. If you’re an investor, can there be a concerted effort at your firm that 50% of your investments each year are in women and minority-owned companies? Equally important, can you advocate for it as a business decision, knowing that diverse teams drive greater returns?

These are just a few examples of the opportunities that arise in each of our lives to create change every day. 

Now, think about your own concentric circles: How big is your sphere of influence? What can you do to touch as many of those circles as possible? 

Start by identifying one thing you can do today or this month, no matter how small, to help advance equality. It takes courage to be the first person to raise your hand, but each of us doing so is the only way we’ll be able to foster a more equal world. 

The FFC and my podcast are the first new ventures I’ve explored in 13 years. I’m excited to be a beginner again but still faced late-night questions about whether I could create another successful company. I return to the same notion in those moments: We need to be the change we want to see and change starts with taking action. 

That’s all it takes — Evaluating your daily choices and seeing how you can use them, in whatever capacity, to create a more equal world. You may be surprised by how receptive people are to hear and support your ideas. As an entrepreneur, I’m accustomed to hearing ‘No’ all the time. The sea of ‘Yes’ we’ve received for The FFC continues to reveal how eager people are to support 50% of the population. 

There’s never been a better time to create lasting change and I want to hear how you’re doing it! What is one way you plan to advocate for equality in the new year? Let me know in the comments!