Now Is The Perfect Time To Be A Female Entrepreneur

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In an age when women are more educated, more career-focused and more ambitious then ever, it begs the question, where are all the female entrepreneurs?

I know several exceptional young professionals who happen to be women. They are typically more educated than their male contemporaries (e.g. multiple master degrees or more), have superior emotional intelligence, greater interest in community development & social causes, equal in ambition and leadership to their male colleagues. Perhaps they are even more humble, don't use self-enhancement type language quite as much, aren't competitive in an exclusive egocentric manner and have a greater variety & depth of social relationships (think capable networker). But, wait, what? These are just the qualities you'd expect that would make the ideal entrepreneur!

Yet they seem to be missing something, some elusive quality of doing, fewer high risk/high reward investments, decisions and projects. This is missing. They just don't take the major risks needed to do a startup and risk everything for a dream. So what is holding them back?

I'm not in their league and I'm not a woman, so I need help with this, but I'm assuming they lack: 

• Missing female role models of entrepreneurs who don't "masculinize" their behavior in order to "make it."
• Missing the social support, societal and cultural validation to "go for broke" in order to do professionally what they believe in. 
• Missing the partner who will back them up fully and give them the full & entire emotional, financial, moral & psychological support they deserve & require to follow their dreams and become an entrepreneur. 
• Missing the confidence (gap) to give up their stable growing careers, to do something a bit "crazy". 
• More attuned and subservient to what their parents, friends and the men in their life think. More socially conscientiousness, more caring roles, more spreading themselves thin in the attention and emotional energy economy of their lives. Until their own dreams take a back seat on the back burner. 
• Lack the incentive to be pioneers when they have more pressure to balance their work-family dreams due to biological-clock constraints and the business of finding a life-partner, starting a family and having a rewarding personal life. 

I just don't know. I'm throwing this out there. We still live in a patriarchal society, in some places more than others. What I'm noticing is, there is this entire generation of very educated women, who simply aren't going to fully self-actualize professionally. They will stay in a rut, build their careers and find positions that are "good enough". In short, they won't even consider being entrepreneurs, start their own businesses or plan to create their own job. Until maybe necessity knocks. 

They don't necessarily have the edge, the self-belief and don't get the reciprocal feedback from teachers, friends, family and society that they can be a successful entrepreneur if they want to. This is a sociological failing and an enigma of how men still belittle women.

Strong and empowered women are not respected quite in the same way, hyper feminine women still get more social validation. 

Female business owners still face a lot of cultural hurdles, are treated fundamentally differently and face unique challenges. 

• Women entrepreneurs think they need to act like men. 
• Women-owned startups receive significantly less investor funding. Why do you think this could be?
• The way women display assertiveness is more social and less essentially self-enhancing & self-centric than men. 
• The irony is of course many of us know all too well, is women may have a superior makeup to be successful entrepreneurs. 
• Many women lack a do-or-die confidence in their abilities that in a male-dominated world of hierarchies can be construed as competency: 

Coined "the confidence gap," this gender-based phenomenon explains why only one in 13 women will become entrepreneurs over the next two years as opposed to one in five men.

• It is possible, that in fact women make better leaders and in a sense, better potential entrepreneurs?
• In the information age, qualities of emotional intelligence: sociability, integrity, honesty, fair negotiation, communication skills, empowering management style, humane leadership - all qualities often found higher in women than in men. 
• Curiously, there is some evidence while men are mentored, helped and often networked into positions by other men (think Big Boys Club), the same is not always true for women. 

Women often lack the support of other female business leaders.

So let me ask you all, why aren't their more female entrepreneurs? I'm not even qualified to talk about this, but it's a reality that concerns us all. While in many families, the woman or mother is the dominant figure, female management in top tier companies is still a huge minority. This is the first generation, where I can name you multiple female political leaders, the first ever!

In an age where women are afraid to call themselves feminists, where women continue to be underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). We need a #hashtag movement on Twitter, sometimes just to remember this issue. 

If female entrepreneurs aren't given positive feedback & the best possible support in urban & western environments like Sweden, Australia, the US and the UK, what kind of change can we expect in countries where women's rights, freedoms and equality are less progressive? Who are the best women entrepreneurs examples in Asia?

Why aren't there more entrepreneurs who are female, dammit? I want to live in a world where women are truly free to start their own businesses, because it's starting to make more sense than ever before. 

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Michael Spencer helps companies improve their content marketing, social media, viral marketing and user-generated content initiatives. He is especially interested in helping innovative startups with their digital marketing needs. 

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