Female Entrepreneurs In Patriarchal Culture - Why 404?

I have heard more than once from male entrepreneurs that women entrepreneurs “do not mean business.” Why do we have such a reputation, and is it true??

In the last few years, I heard: "Female entrepreneurship needs help." As a woman, I agree. We don't need a wake-up call only when it comes to entrepreneurship but also in toxic corporate environments, but that is a topic for another occasion.?

Although being a woman entrepreneur is challenging, I can not help but notice that the most significant reasons we give up or never try live within us.

The first step towards healing is honesty, not playing the victim. The first choice gives power; the other takes it away.?

Women entrepreneurs in patriarchal environments exist.

Some have been running companies for multiple decades.?

However, not every woman entrepreneur lasts that long for various reasons. Not all of these are caused by the challenging market.?

Here are several I have seen/experienced:?

#1 Big businesses are based on patriarchy because women don’t have the stomach for politics

Big business and politics go hand in hand; make no mistake, that is the case everywhere. Women have a lower tolerance for what politics entails and usually steer clear from businesses that demand that kind of sacrifice.?

Why would I get myself into that??

Many female, pretty, creative businesses make good money, employ fewer people, and do not have megalomania as a tendency. Those businesses help families have a good life. Anything more than that would cause families to suffer, and the company would lose its original purpose. In this case, entrepreneurship employs family and "people we like." This type of business stays in business without problems unless the market turns into an ‘eat or be eaten’ red ocean when businesses must devour their competitors or die.?

It is essential to underline that politics are inevitable and part of every aspect of life, so this is not a legitimate reason to give up. It is an incentive to find a way to use politics correctly for the benefit of all.?

#2 Disruption of the family dynamics

Some women have talent, knowledge, and passion for something that earns them money "on the side" and could objectively become a business. However, they either do not become entrepreneurs or withdraw when they realize they will have to change and take on some stereotypical (not always objectively) masculine traits to be entrepreneurs.

There are no 2 separate personalities, business and personal.

A change that a woman will undergo as a result of this journey is a change that the partner will feel, and in most cases, the partner will not like the fact that the woman he married to be a bassist now thinks she is a frontman.

Business is not only beautiful but also demanding, sometimes ugly and risky.

If a woman had been sheltered from how the world REALLY works, this would leave a mark on her, and it may also result in a broken relationship because the man no longer feels like the "head of the family." This thinking is not reserved for rural areas; it exists in every stratum of society.

A highly educated and successful IT expert told his girlfriend she would stop wanting children if she spent more time in my company.?

Another businessman said a woman like me probably wouldn't care about making breakfast for her children.?

The third, a serial entrepreneur, told his girlfriend I was "putting ideas into her head" and causing him problems.

Imagine that.

A woman with an idea in her head? Well, that should be beaten out of her with a shovel!?

When two people form a partnership, there is an unspoken agreement about roles in it.

Only two very flexible people can change and survive together. Everything else falls apart.

Faced with such a choice, women generally choose family, especially if they think the family can live well off even without her becoming an entrepreneur.

Of course, the question remains," Are you even for this in the first place if you are so easy to sway."

#3 Entrepreneurship as a phase between well-paid jobs

Characteristic for both men and women. A person reaches the perceived maximum in their corporate career path and concludes that they want to try to create something of their own. The woman underestimates what is needed for this vision to come to life because, within the corporation, many things have been delegated to others, and she does not understand the entire process to which she committed herself. If she does not downsize in the hopes of future growth and forgets about benefits, business lunches, and a secure salary...

...it is unlikely that she will succeed in entrepreneurship. It is more likely that this will be a transitional period until a good corporate opportunity presents itself.?

#4 Individualist spirit, thirst for freedom, and personal growth entrepreneurship can not provide right now

This item also applies to both sexes, female and male. An entrepreneur becomes because of their thirst for freedom. Still, if the business reaches a specific size and is not followed by processes that support the formation of a system, the entrepreneur becomes trapped more than in a 9 to 5 job. If she has a perfectionist tendency and lacks the maturity to "carry the burden," the business can destroy her if she doesn't pull back to build a strong foundation because the growth happened too fast. Also, if she sees the system, procedures, and rules as limitations to her freedom or identity, she may become a development bottleneck, and the business shut down or be sold.

Honestly, I fell into this category. I didn't want to deal with boards of directors and paperwork in my 20s. There was time for that in the 40s. I consciously suffocated something suffocating me because I believed I would hit the ceiling quickly in my professional growth and not achieve my potential but become an "SME boss." Years after, I'm grateful to myself for that decision, even though it's one of the hardest things I've had to make.

#5 Circle of support as a temporary premarital formation

Support circles for women exist, but there are few of them. I'm not talking about those exceptions; I'm talking about the general state of the market.?

Women usually do not consistently support other women unless in humanitarian actions related to children. A woman's focus in a household, where duties are traditionally divided, is on the family. She loses her identity outside the family. Another relic of patriarchy. She gradually but consistently closes herself off to the outside world and communicates that she has no energy for things outside that immediate family circle of interest. During this time, men unburdened by family obligations maintain friendships and help each other through life, except in extraordinary circumstances. The situation is even more pronounced if the woman jumps a class or two in a social class by getting married, and her closure towards the "version of herself before marriage" is even more decisive. I wrote about the existence of classes in one of the previous articles.

People don't like witnesses to a past they'd rather forget.

Not all women with ambition are from the big city, sit in a hub, or have realized during their studies that they want to be entrepreneurs. However, if they did not surround themselves with women who share their ambitions, it would be tough for them to survive on the entrepreneurial path in the environment they came from. The people will drag her backward with the best of intentions. Support is needed for women who don't have the capital, location, parents, or partner to support them.

In the Work Life podcast, Adam Grant's guest said: "Privilege is about the absence of inconvenience. When you have it, you don't notice it."

#6 Money and financial security as a short-term motiv

Similar to the previous one, but still deserving to be a separate item, girls who come from a patriarchal household to a big city for college and have ambitions to make their lives different from the lives of their mothers/grandmothers/great-grandmothers are aware that there is no going back.?

The smart ones try to provide themselves with sources of income and a promising future. Some do it through entrepreneurship, especially if they come from an entrepreneurial family. However, their motive often is not to create and be free but to be safe and earn more money. If a less stressful option appears to get that safety and earn/live well, either through a marriage where the partner takes over the responsibilities of the business or through the opportunity to work in a company that offers better conditions, a woman will leave entrepreneurship.

In this case, entrepreneurship was a channel to ensure financial security—a channel, not a meaning per se. It was Plan B.

There is no entrepreneurship without love for creation. Even the most successful people often tell you how long they worked for little money to "get it going." Most often, they did not even think about short-term cash initially. They thought about long-term money and value.?

#7 “A woman among men”

Since women are scarce in entrepreneurship, they rarely start something together and are primarily in partnerships with men if they even manage to get equity.

Male partnerships are usually based on camaraderie and previous acquaintances. In such a company, the game is often rigged so that the woman has to work for a tiny share, is bound by capital, and at the same time has very little say.

A woman becomes an accessory to a team she did not choose but with which she must cooperate and who, at the sign of any conflict, will take a side that will rarely be hers.

Remember, these people have known each other for a long time, and even if they don't say it, they think that it is her place to give birth to children.

Why is she getting into "our business"?

Unfortunately, for a woman to have any influence in such a company, she has to find a way to get the majority in parliament and hire people who are loyal to her.

It's a dirty game. Sometimes, it also involves hiring people you objectively don't need to get the numbers.

The problem is that even the narrative in the business environment is designed to push women out because they are uncomfortable.

And who wants a life where they will be uncomfortable 80% of the time?

Exhausted, women either leave such businesses or, unfortunately, become crueler than their male partners because their focus becomes "victory" and "revenge." I don't know which option is worse... They need support to get out of that environment and go somewhere where they will be nurtured.

Leaving is not easy. Especially when the situation is not "that" bad. Yneed the strength to go further until you find adequate partners. That is where women falter. They rely on male partners to have CONNECTIONS, so there is no easy way out for them.

#8 A complex relationship with an overbearing/distant father

Due to the lack of women in positions of influence, girls who wanted a career could not look up to their mothers but to their fathers. This admiration for the father is often accompanied by the fear of experiencing the fate of a compliant, usually characterized as a "weak" mother, as well as a promise to oneself:

"I will never be her."

Women who work on themselves recognize that the mother was not the victim but the manipulator, who was satisfied with the state in which she was taken care of, only apparently oppressed. Then, the fear of the mother's fate turns into contempt, disgust, and the desire to "be like a man."

Issue?

You can't be a boy because you are, simply put, a girl. And that's wonderful.?

But being a girl does not mean impotence, weakness, stupidity, naivety, etc.

That is a matter of choice.

A woman who has not seen a woman in a position of power cannot imagine such a phenomenon.

She begins to imitate what she knows: a man in a position of power.

Boss bi*ch, girl boss, Goddess. This is not said by a person who is emotionally grown up to occupy the position she is in.?

The problem with this way of thinking is that denying feminine energy leads to health problems.

Patterns include irregular cycles, fibroids, cysts, and the inability to get pregnant.

We are reaching a pivotal moment when the future of family or health will be questioned. Then, most women choose to withdraw from the active role in entrepreneurship.

Another problem that arises, which is related to the absence of role models of female power, is that a woman from such an environment often subconsciously, throughout her life, looks for male authority to whom she will bow down, no matter how much she thinks she is not looking for it.

Even if she becomes a partner with another female entrepreneur with feminine energy, she will not be able to accept her authority if she does not resemble "Dad" in some way.

At least not without serious psychotherapy.

#9 We try our hardest for others, not ourselves

I know I read somewhere, and I'm sure you will remember numerous examples from practice, that women are motivated more to protect others than to push themselves to the forefront. Even in salary negotiations, a woman is more likely to get it if she says she will contribute to the system in that way rather than a man who would demand it because he deserves it.?

I was most motivated when I saw that my team was counting on me, and we were together. I was less motivated as a freelancer or working independently on projects. I was bound there by my word that I would deliver something, and the need to protect my reputation. And money, ofc.

On a large scale, entrepreneurship requires a certain amount of selfishness and narcissism that women are socially conditioned to be less prone to.

Once again, there are exceptions. Some women have been running companies for 20 years or more. But there are few of them. They are often not in the eye of the public, so support programs for female entrepreneurs are critical. Let's be aware that it will take at least a couple of generations of female entrepreneurs to change the distribution of responsibilities between partners in the household and expectations from women, as well as to crystallize the figure of a female entrepreneur, which girls will be able to look up to in a healthy way.?

Before that, a sacrifice is necessary as a transitional stage of evolution into the new order of things.?

Note: This article is inspired by personal business experiences, Adam Grant's book "Give & Take" and the movie "Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker". The film's theme is transforming a former African-American slave into the first US millionaire from the beginning of the 20th century. So, it can. Thank you to Dragana Jov?i? , co-founder of the "Uradi-Zaradi" platform, who contributed significantly to the text through constructive criticism.

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