Breaking the Bias :: Women in Entrepreneurship
URMILA UDHALIKAR / AUGUST 27, 2022
Entrepreneurship is much more than just starting a business. The following tale of four women in the Miami startup scene, which is dominated by white men, only serves to reinforce this notion. Nevertheless, the gender equality gap in entrepreneurship still faces substantial challenges that must be resolved.
hat happens to a dream deferred?" opens a poem titled ‘Harlem’ by Langston Hughes. The brief poem raises concerns about a person's goals and the difficulties that may arise if their dreams and wishes do not come true. Because of the significant difficulties that exist in their realities, Black and Latinx women entrepreneurs do not have the same opportunity to manifest their dreams and bring them to fruition as this poem. In the United States, entrepreneurship has long been viewed as a key aspect of obtaining prosperity and success. Business ownership acts as a mechanism for upward mobility for many excluded groups, as it enables increased access to income and power. Despite this individualistic worldview, company ownership remains unequal in the United States: women-owned businesses, particularly those owned by women of colour, continue to lag behind.
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In the United States, entrepreneurship has long been viewed as a key aspect of obtaining prosperity and success.
Miami has innumerable assets, a diverse population, a vibrant culture, and a well-developed transportation system, which make it an emerging startup hub in South Florida. Miami's landscape is constantly evolving, the reality that it is becoming a destination for company expansion, growth, and investment cannot be denied. Even considering this environment, things are not easy for the other communities. The following tales of four women who started new businesses in Miami with the goal of diversifying tech jobs in the future demonstrate the difficulties of developing an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem.
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Pictured: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2021, September 1). Earnings of full-time workers. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved August 15, 2022, from https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-earnings/2020/home.htm
Pictured: By James Steinberg via Pinterest
Maxeme Tuchman, a Miami-born daughter of Cuban immigrants, returned to her hometown in 2016 fresh off a White House fellowship to launch her own edtech firm, ‘Caribu’.The company's software allows parents and grandparents to communicate with their children via an interactive video conversation in which they may read and draw from a selection of handpicked titles available in eight languages, allowing users to stay in touch with family even when they are not in the same location.Tuchman, as CEO of Caribu, set out to maximise the company's online library of books and games, becoming one of the very few Latina founders of a technology-based growth company. Caribu's most recent investment round was a USD 2 million Series A on December 28, 2020. Through this, Tuchman
discovered a solution to her seed finance problem while simultaneously creating new opportunities in Miami for women and people of colour. She used the internet crowdfunding platform Wefunder to connect entrepreneurs with investors. With a USD 500 minimum investment, that fund welcomed first-time investors, and many flocked in. Tuchman became the first Latinx founder, male or female, to reach the USD 1.07 million cap set by Caribu's capital-raising campaign. Women made up about 40% of her investors, while individuals of colour made up 35%.
Felecia Hatcher, a Miami native, worked in corporate technology professions until the global financial crisis forced her to reconsider her goals. In South Florida, Hatcher, who previously swore off being an entrepreneur, has grown multiple successful businesses while also assisting others in developing their dream projects. Felecia has spent the last ten years of her life motivating a new generation of leaders through her interactive speeches on entrepreneurship, college funding, and personal branding. Felecia is the co-founder of ‘Tribe Cowork and Urban Innovation Lab’,a co-working space and innovation lab in a historically Black area that she built after noticing that many urban children lacked tech skills,‘Code Miami Fever’ a company that offers training camps and hackathons for young people, and co-founder of ‘Black-Tech Week’ and also the author of five books. So far , she has been recognised twice by the White House for her entrepreneurial endeavours. Hatcher is confident in Miami's ability to become a Top 5 tech and innovation centre. Her agenda also includes increasing possibilities for minorities in technology, which consists of mainly White and male people right now.
Moving on, Dr. Pandwe Gibson, armed with postgraduate degrees and a family tradition of Black women scientists, co-founded a charter school system in her birthplace of New Orleans before going to Miami. Dr. Pandwe Gibson is an ecopreneur, investor, and scientist. She dived into the business world after developing and scaling a network of extremely successful urban schools using data and technology in post-Katrina New Orleans. She established, led, and expanded more than 20 successful enterprises, especially a network of highly successful urban schools. Currently, she helps entrepreneurs create smart manufacturing for smart cities through an on-demand marketplace powered by AI, IoT, and Blockchain technology through EcoTech Visions. The annual revenue of Ecotech Visions is USD 529,222.
Last on our list is, Rebecca Fishman Lipsey, who is the president and CEO of The Miami Foundation, a USD 350 million community foundation dedicated to making Greater Miami a stronger, more equitable place. Prior to the existence of The Miami Foundation, Rebecca was the founder and CEO of Radical Partners, which accelerates social impact innovation in South Florida. While being a part of that organisation she has cooked up quite a few social innovators to scale the impact of the organisation over the last four years; Radical Partners has helped scale and launch over 50 social media ventures. Lipsey's work here embraced a direct strategy for structural transformation, which was by stimulating the growth in capital and skill-based activities rather than labour intensive activities. She was focused on finding new talent in order to foster creativity, and 83% of her clients were women, persons of colour, or a combination of the two since the establishment of the Miami Foundation. The International Stevie Award for Women in Business called her ‘Best Non-Profit Executive’, ‘Best Role Model’ by Miami Today, and ‘20 Under 40’ by The Miami Herald.
Women make up 36% of tech employees, compared to 48% in the rest of the private sector. African-Americans make up 7.4% of the tech industry, compared to 14.4% of the total private sector.
In the United States, the high-tech sector employs a higher proportion of men, Whites, and Asian-Americans than other private companies. Women make up 36% of tech employees, compared to 48% in the rest of the private sector. African-Americans make up 7.4% of the tech industry, compared to 14.4% of the total private sector. According to a survey on diversity in technology conducted by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity
Pictured: four women illustration by unknown via pinterest
Commission (2014), only 8% of high-tech workers are Hipsanic, compared to 13.9 % overall. Meanwhile, according to a 2018 research by the Brookings Institution, Black and Latino representation in the sector is either declining or improving only little. Experts say Miami, with its varied population, has the potential to change the face of America's traditionally White, male-dominated technology industry.
Unconscious gender bias hurts women entrepreneurs in a number of ways, from lack of encouragement from friends to a lack of funding from investors.
Unconscious gender bias hurts women entrepreneurs in a number of ways, from lack of encouragement from friends to a lack of funding from investors. Felicia argues that Black and Latinx entrepreneurs don’t just need the round of applause but they need rounds of funding. Why are White males still more likely to launch venture capital-funded firms in Silicon Valley? Even though women own 39% of all businesses in the US, female entrepreneurs get only 2% of venture funding. Leading contributors to these discrepancies are gender and racial discrimination. Women, especially women of colour, lag behind in business ownership when compared to their White and male counterparts. To include groups like women and women of colour, we need to embrace a more inclusive definition of the term entrepreneurship and reinterpret what it represents.
Even though women own 39% of all businesses in the US, female entrepreneurs get only 2% of venture funding.
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Pictured: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2021, September 1). Earnings of full-time workers. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-earnings/2020/pdf/home.pdf
These four women demonstrate what it takes to run successful businesses despite the fact that there are no fast solutions for systemic sexism and racism. They paint images different than that of the stereotype of digital entrepreneurs, and their experiences truly have the ability to change attitudes of growing economic potential. Merely being a woman entrepreneur is extremely impactful in today's society because it precipitates power; and power is like matter; it is not always generated or destroyed but is often redistributed, which is the best manoeuvre. These
entrepreneurs,who may have different growth trajectories, but have faced many parallels in their challenges, are living examples of this.
Keywords
women- entrepreneurs, entreprenuership, Miami startups, Maxeme Tuchman, Felecia Hatcher, minorities, tech-startups, Dr. Pandwe Gibson, Tribe Co-work and Urban Innovation lab, Caribu, EcoTech Visions, Rebecca Fishman Lipsey, The Miami Foundation, Radical Partners, African-American women in Tech business, innovators, startups
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References
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Billington, F. (2021, January 21). Venture Capital Funding Goes Mostly To White Male Founders. Dot.LA.
https://dot.la/venture-capital-2650047652.html
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Bittner, A & Lau, B. (2021, February 25). Women-Led Startups Received Just 2.3% Of VC Funding In 2020. Harvard Business Review.
https://hbr.org/2021/02/women-led-startups-received-just-2-3-of-vc-funding-in-2020
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Dipaolo, C. (2021, May 6). How Four Women Made Miami More Equitable for Startups - HBS Working Knowledge. HBS Working Knowledge.
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-four-women-made-miami-more-equitable-for-startups
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B. (2021, September 1). Highlights Of Women's Earnings In 2020 : BLS Reports: U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-earnings/2020/home.htm
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