A truly pathetic article from a recent Mail on Sunday. An extract:
A report from the Federation of Small Businesses last week argued that while women-led firms face many of the same challenges that all small businesses encounter, ‘there appear to be issues which are more acute for women business owners’.
Its survey of more than 1,900 women business owners found key challenges included balancing work and family life, achieving credibility for the business, and a lack of confidence.
One of the comments hits the nail on the head:
Why must we do more for women entrepreneurs? Who is the ‘we’? If people can’t do it for themselves, men or women, they are not entrepreneurs.
Personally I’m all for men and women trying “different” jobs. Not least because it would be good to see more men in Health, Teaching, Law etc. But surely this sort of thing undermines the whole thing. Not long ago the Institute for Management reminded us that women managers and executives lacked confidence and weren’t assertive and found it hard to put in the hours. Here we are again with much the same. This seeking additional help simply repeats and repeats that women lack the qualities necessary in a competitive world . Given that there aren’t a vast army of executives or entrepreneurs quite possibly many men don’t have the necessary qualities either. But one would be laughed at to suggest additional support for unassertive, unconfident, part time men. Because it would look like a bad investment. Which of course the other feature of female own businesses in general, that they are single person and designed to offer flexible time off is well attested by the data and indicates that investment won’t grow the business and add jobs or production to the nation’s climb out of the recession. As a tax payer I’d want my taxes invested wisely for me and the nation., on businesses with leadership and potential whatever the genitalia of the owner. This report suggest all women owned businesses are a bad bet.
Agreed. Not only Preference Theory but also women’s gender-typical risk aversion comes into play. I believe women ‘entrepreneurs’ are invariably first in line for taxpayer-funded government loans i.e. men (who pay 72% of income tax in the UK) pick up the tab when the women fail, and if the women succeed, the women reap the rewards. One way or another men pay, and women are the beneficiaries.
If someone is setting up in business in order to secure a “better work/life balance” then she – because it inevitably is a woman – is not prepared to work the hours and in the location that would make her employable by a third party, even a public sector organisation.
This next observation is really maybe one for The Conservative Woman, but failing public services = women working part time or “flexibly”. I use the inverted commas since they are rigid in their requirements of an employer, and it is why local authorities and NHS Trusts rely so heavily on temps.
Very often the agency temp is the only person working full time in the office. The employees are on parental leave, having a carer’s break, taking a flexi-day or off sick. Something happens that suddenly requires long hours to be put in immediately. Your flexible employee says, “I have to pick up my child, so I’m still leaving at three”. The agency temp does the job and it’s £500 +VAT. But it’s worth every penny.
As a result service managers are desperate to get these “flexible” workers out of their lives, and a hobby business or Etsy shop seems the way to do it. And this is why the female businesses fail. It’s Preference Theory again, entrepreneurship is as hard work as a career job and 6/7 women aren’t prepared to put the graft in.