It’s not often I write pieces concerning my home town, the throbbing metropolis of Bedford, but a piece in the Bedford Independent today caught my eye, Bedford business owner says upskilling female entrepreneurs will grow local and national economy.
The business owner in question is Sophie Turner, described in the article thus:
Sophie Turner, CEO and founder of the herstory consultancy, has spent a decade working in business development and public relations and is now campaigning for a serious commitment to gender equality in business.
Extracts from the piece (I would urge readers to read the whole piece):
A Bedford business owner has called on the government to do more to support the upskilling of female entrepreneurs and business owners and help boost the UK economy.
She wants the UK government to address the gender gap and also support women to gain the communication skills needed to build their gravitas and break down the barriers to funding.
Data shows that, unlike in boys, a ‘confidence gender gap’ starts in girls from as young as six years old. This can then hinder how women develop communication and self-promotion skills in later life, skills that are vital in entrepreneurship.
This in turn creates a negative impact on their sales and networking abilities, which are vital for business and funding opportunities.
So much so that, according to government research, less than 2% of all venture capital funding in 2023 went to female-led businesses.
This lack of diverse representation at a funding level shows that investors are often more likely to connect with a business with the same gender, ethnicity or social background.
With only 14% of all Angel Investors being female, entrepreneurial women are therefore struggling to access funding networks and secure financial support.
Her comments have attracted the attention of Bedford and Kempston MP, Mohammad Yasin (Labour) who has pledged his support for her campaign.
“When Sophie came to me with her campaign I was immediately willing to see what I can do with her locally to help close the gender gap for women entrepreneurs,” said Mr Yasin.
“Female-founded businesses face so many barriers to growth and this is an example of how when we lift them up, we can drive positive change.
“Sophie is doing powerful work for female founders but the government need to do more. Our female entrepreneurs have the potential to add a hugely significant amount of value to the UK economy and we need to be doing everything we can to help them.”
The Bedford Independent is 2/3 female-led and is backing Sophie Turner in her campaign to help boost Bedford’s economy and beyond with more support for female entrepreneurs. If you’d like to find out more, follow herstory on Instagram.
Ms Turner’s website is here. I shall be emailing her to request a Zoom video discussion on the issue of entrepreneurs. I have asked the Bedford Independent to ask Mohammad Yasin MP to detail the “many barriers to growth” faced by female-founded businesses.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Sophie Turner answers the question herself. As she points out from age 6 there is a “gap” in the aquisition of ”confidence” and the set of behaviours that are generally required of the successful business person. Confidence indeed, risk taking, focus on work (the old saying look after the business for two or three years and then it looks after you) “gravitas” , sticking at it, competition, decisiveness, selling/persuasiveness and sometimes “bloody minded”. In fact many of the things in other contexts labelled “toxic masculinity”. In my entire adult life I have seen any number of national and local schemes to encourage female led business start ups and continuation (I have lived in northern conurbations which are solidly Labour in all that time and that have had even more local schemes that national ones). These have all basically been about giving taxpayers money to supposedly promising nascent female led businesses. If Sophie Turner’s figures are correct we can say for certain that 45 years of such things have been a complete waste.
So who to we blame for this lack of entrepreneurial skills and behaviors? Well of course if we look at children at age six, right up to leaving school in their late teens, it is women! Mothers, Child Carers, School Teachers, even social workers, children are effectively in the hands of women until at least their middle teens. How boys aquire these things so early can only be because all the women involved in their nurture, care, education and guidance in their formative years. Or maybe they are innate? Either way “the Patriarchy” can have had little part in this.
What always amazes me is that feminists in fact highlight so many of the reasons that women may not succeed, these days from qualities like “confidence” to childcare or “brain fog” in menopause, and then expect “support” (aka money or time off work) to people they have made abundantly clear are less likely to succeed. Sophie Turner in effect makes a good case for any reasonable investor to think a female led business start up is likely to be more about a charitable giving situation than a good investment. And of course this is the truth of it this will be yet another initiative where money is given to be considered nice and virtuous.
As Warren Farrell pointed out a couple of decades ago more productive would be teaching girls to adopt the behaviours of successful businessmen. Particularly if these are “innate” in boys and maybe they have to taught to girls. But then that would require teaching a set of behaviours labelled “toxic” by our “blobs”.
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