Working with women entrepreneurs

My journey into feminism began with watching my mother work and take care of the family as my father suffered from multiple serious illnesses. That was in the early 1960s when there was tremendous pressure on women to be stay-at-home-mums and on men to be the 'breadwinner'.

She showed me I needed to be able to earn my own living since you never knew when you were going to need to stand on your own two feet and take care of your own bills and family.

In the 1970s she joined the Post Office (now British Telecom) as they were one of the few employers offering equal pay. She saw no point in earning less than a man for the same job. She retired on a pension calculated on that equal pay.

I joined the workforce in the 1970s and can still remember jobs being advertised with 'women's rates' and 'men's rates'. We moved on swiftly from that but I still struggled to earn what I felt I was worth.

My bosses were always happy to giving me the same work as a man (if not more) but seemed concerned I could not handle the same money. My job titles were always slightly different and when I lost out on a promotion to a man who knew absolutely nothing about the job and department in question (and was to manage me), I decided to go it my own way.

I figured if I was the boss there would be no argument about equal pay as I would set my own pay scales and that was that. So in 1980, I started the business I run today.

Equal pay for the self-employed?

We all know the statistics and arguments about equal pay in the workplace. But what has staggered me is how self-employed women consistently end up earning less than self-employed men and ending a lifetime of work in pension and savings poverty.

There is no-one setting the rate of pay for an entrepreneur so what is going on?

Term time working and school hours working makes you poorer

If you can't work the hours you are not going to make the money - unless you find a way to earn more or work smarter. High childcare costs cram many women into school hours and term time working. It can be hard to get your business momentum going when you have to keep stopping. The statistics are there. Check this link.

People pleasing ruins your margins

There is something in the way we socialise girls and women or in what we expect of ourselves that makes it difficult for women in the service sector to say - if you want me you have to pay me first. Or that costs extra. In the back of our minds is some distant echo of nice girls don't charge that pollutes our mindset and our approach to business.

The forums and groups I work in and support of full of women saying things like:

My client is 90 days in arrears is it OK to stop working for him until he pays?

I did all this extra stuff but s/he doesn't want to pay for it

They don't want to pay for my time and call me constantly with urgent things

Profitable relationships need boundaries

All that pleasing, supporting, and waiting. Does it sound familiar? Women can find it incredibly difficult to say you need to put your money down for this service - and that one is extra.

My work with micro-entrepreneurs through my KoffeeKlatch brand is all about helping to set boundaries. We use simple contracts to help set out the 'rules of the game' and then support women through using them to train their clients how to treat them. While we work with men too, we rarely get a man saying things like

If I charge interest on late payment will it upset them?

If I ask for money in advance will they think it is too pushy?

Women's under earning leads to poverty in old age

We need to find a way to support women entrepreneurs into earning enough - not just running subsistence and pin money businesses. While there are a lot of fabulous examples of female self-made millionaires and billionaires, there are thousands of women who earn less than minimum wage when you take the cost of being in business into account.

New laws won't do it all

A staggering number of women are involved in the 'gig' economy with all the opaque 'workers rights' that may bring them. Sky high childcare costs are bringing more in every day.

We have a government wanting to tax self-employed workers as we are employees, but provide only minimal rights. While I am all for regulating the excesses of the gig economy - I would never want to see a world where self-employment is not a viable choice.

We need to help women set up and maintain profitable businesses that don't involve working all night to make ends meet. We've all been in start-up mode - but it is not a sustainable lifestyle over the longer haul.

Take the Pretty Woman approach?

I just loved it when Julia Robert's character said I say who, I say when..

She was most adamantly self-employed whatever you think of her profession.

We really do need to set some boundaries and take charge, however, small our business endeavour. That way we can work towards a plan and start to charge what we are worth.

What's your plan to make sure you earn enough in your business?