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Without women in power we are only telling half the story

March 08, 2021
Indy100-Conversations
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Helen _Pankhurst

It's ironic, that what is preventing millions of feminists from marching shoulder-to-shoulder this International Women's Day is the same thing causing their rights to be rolled back, eroding decades of progress. COVID-19, the blight on every human life on the planet, is not blighting all lives equally.

Like all crises, COVID-19 is impacting women in uniquely cruel ways around the world. The rise in domestic violence, the greater risk of child marriage, the sexual exploitation visited upon women whenever poverty prevails, the fact women are overwhelmingly represented on the front lines as carers – they make up 70% of the global health workforce for example …the list goes on.

Why, then, are women so glaringly absent from almost every decision-making table at every level, when it comes to COVID crisis response? When we know, we have proof, that women are disproportionately affected by this and other crises – why are we not permitted a fair say in how we respond to them?

A report published this week by CARE International shows governments are letting women down in all crises – from COVID-19 to the climate emergency and to humanitarian disasters. Governments made up primarily of men. Women are not equally present in sufficient numbers, or with enough status, at the decision-making tables. For the pandemic, they make up just 24% of national COVID-19 taskforce members.

The lack of equal, or even significant, representation of women in power is the reason women continue to be disproportionately affected when disaster strike and economic resources and physical protection are stripped away: because their voices are not being heard, therefore their needs are not being considered.

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Women are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis too, yet under-represented at global climate negotiations - most recently just 37% of top negotiators. Why is it women can be trusted to care for the sick and dying, hold a family together when disaster strikes, walk miles for water when there is none, farm the parched land where crops no longer grow – but they can't be trusted to have a say in what to do about the causes of such misery?

Furthermore, in poorer nations, at this time of COVID, of climate and other emergencies, there is the threat of the UK Aid budget cut - on top of the overall budget shrinking. In the greatest hour of global need, the most marginalised and vulnerable women in the world are in some places doubly, triply let down.

The report, 'Time for a Better Bargain: How the Aid System Short-changes Women and Girls in Crisis', shows government donors and UN agencies, including the UK, have fallen short of significantly increasing funding to women's groups in fragile and conflict affected states. Most government donors gave only a fraction of one percent of aid spend to women's rights organizations, movements, and government institutions in fragile states. The UK gave just 0.27% in fragile states to women's groups.

It is a massive, global problem that most humanitarian donors do not sufficiently fund gender equality or gender-sensitive programs. Seven of eleven government donors allocate barely 2% of funds to targeted gender equality programming in humanitarian settings. We are talking about neglecting critical issues like addressing violence against women and providing sexual and reproductive healthcare.

So what are we going to do about this, as women, as feminists? From inside our homes, separated from one another by walls, and miles, and fear, and rules – how are we to demonstrate our unity, and call out for the world to do better by women? Well, this year we are going to 'march' digitally. We're going to rally online, and march upon social media, making our voices heard and our demands visible.

This year #March4Women is highlighting the fact that without women in power, we are only telling half the story. Those in charge are only hearing half the story. We are continuously reading a book with every other word absent from the page: we cannot possibly ensure the best outcomes for the world while we're operating in this way.

It needn't be this way. The UK government could show leadership. It could do so at the G7 summit in Cornwall ensuring diverse women's leadership and priorities shape the G7 agenda on recovery from COVID-19. It could do so by ensuring gender justice and women's leadership are central to the COP26 climate agenda in Glasgow. It could do so by maintaining the 0.7% commitment to UK Aid, and increasing support for women's leadership and rights, including women's organizations responding to crises.

Only when we hear women's voices as often as we hear men's in the corridors of power – and voices coming from a diversity of backgrounds - will we be hearing the full story. Only then will the celebrations be complete.

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Can tech help female entrepreneurs break the bias?

Women founders continue to come up against common challenges and biases
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Written by Kelly Devine, Division President UK & Ireland, Mastercard

Starting a business may have historically been perceived as a man’s game, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Research shows women are actually more likely than men to actively choose to start their own business – often motivated by the desire to be their own boss or to have a better work-life balance and spend more time with their family.

The recently published Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurship 2021 found that in the category of 'Aspiration Driven Entrepreneurship’ – capturing those who actively choose to start their own business – women in the UK surpass men: 60% vs 56%. And Mastercard research from February 2022 found 10% of female business owners started their business in the past two years compared to 6% of men – meaning women were 67% more likely to have started a business during the pandemic.

Yet, there are common challenges that women founders continue to come up against - not least the gender imbalance in the household and long-held biases which are still prevalent.

In the UK, women are almost three times more likely to be balancing care and home commitments than men, and this was exacerbated during the pandemic as the additional barriers of school closures and lockdowns meant that the care time of dependents rose significantly on a day-to-day level for women. In addition, women were less likely to have access to a home office, greatly impacting the work they were able to accomplish when working from home was the only option.

It's also widely known that female business owners are still more likely to struggle to access funding for their business ideas. According to Dealroom, all-women founding teams received just 1.4% of the €23.7bn invested into UK start-ups in 2021, while all-male leadership teams have taken almost 90% of the available capital.

Without financial support, and when juggling significant time pressures both at home and at work, how can women grow their companies and #BreaktheBias (as this year’s International Women’s Day termed it)? What tools or support can save them time and money, and give them the headspace they need to focus on building their business?

With female owned businesses collectively estimating revenue growth of £120 billion over the next five years, solving this problem is bigger than supporting women – it’s about supporting the national economy.

Using tech to level the playing field

There are clearly societal issues at play that need to be resolved. But when we look at the rise in technology businesses during the pandemic, we can plainly see an alternative source of support critical for business growth: digital tools.

A third of female business owners say new technologies will be crucial to the success of their business in the future and one in five say it is the most important thing for business growth.

With new technology comes new ways to pay, create, and work. And yet there are barriers that prevent business owners accessing this technology. Women are significantly more likely to say they want to use more digital tools but don’t know what is best for their business and also more concerned about the security of digital tools.

When technology is adopted by businesses – whether using online accounting solutions or messenger services for communicating with staff – it saves them time, allows them to maintain and grow their customer base, and ultimately increases cost savings and profit.

By drastically improving the training and support that is available to women-owned business to access and utilise technology we will allow these businesses to grow and succeed. And we know there is demand for it.

Research done by the IFC and Dalberg shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to invest time and money in business development. This includes product development, customer base expansion, and digital tools and training and there are plenty of services available offering this type of support – many of them for free.

One such programme is Strive UK – an initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – which aims to reach 650,000 micro and small business owners across the UK and empower them with the tools they need to thrive in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools and one-to-one mentoring.

Working together with small business experts – Enterprise Nation, Be the Business and Digital Boost – we hope to ensure hundreds of thousands of UK female business owners have the tools they need to succeed and reach their ambitious goals. Because this ambition remains strong in the UK, with female business owners largely optimistic about the future despite the multitude of challenges they are facing. Four in ten say they will grow their business in the next five years – compared to only a third of male business owners – and they’re also 35% less likely than men to say they plan to downsize or close the business.

But if we do not empower female entrepreneurs to access the tools and technology they need to grow, there is a risk this optimism could be misplaced. Support programmes that provide business owners with guidance and mentorship can help ensure this isn’t the case, allowing female entrepreneurs to not only survive but thrive in the months and years ahead.