Female Entrepreneurs Re-Educating The Narrative
For generations, Hollywood studios’ classic American business tale highlighted stereotyped male sensibilities, hunches, and perceived fortitude to achieve success. Hollywood may have created the glossy version of life imitating art, but the residual has longstanding impacts on droves of female entrepreneurs working to break through independently and without apology.
Women have continuously fought for an equal playing field. Yet, even in the wake of successful female CEOs and entrepreneurs, a recent Forbes article points to many welcoming the end of the ‘Girlboss’ labeled era once and for all.
The issue is a woman executive and entrepreneur is constantly spotlighted as female in success and failure in a lopsided fashion to their male counterparts. As a result, many women find themselves fighting against an image not shaped by them.
According to Kristen Syrett, a linguistics professor at Rutgers University, “It’s reminding everyone that there is a style of being a boss: that there’s being a boss and then there’s the girl boss. And no matter how hard you work, you’re still a girl—you’re a girl in a man’s world.”
This man’s world-shaping, buoyed by decades-old media-driven subtle stereotypes, is being chipped away by each new female business that launches, grows, and collectively changes the narrative. With collaborative efforts and consciousness adaptations, gender may finally take a back seat in business conversations of the future.
Part of the connected effort is in education and opportunity on global fronts, such as the World Bank’s Female Entrepreneurship Resource Point addressing learning and funding opportunities. The World Bank indicates that the number of women operating their own businesses is increasing, contributing $3 trillion to the global economy. However, women continue to face huge obstacles that affect their businesses, including a lack of capital, strict social constraints, and limited time and skill acquisition for some.
Changing the gender narrative is a global entrepreneurial undertaking frequently led by women finding solutions to their specific needs. For example, according to an Entrepreneur article on women entrepreneurs addressing women-only problems, businesses launched in female hygiene and wellness often take place because they recognize the issues more directly and can relate to shared experiences.