Boost for Women Entrepreneurs
Daily Mail, Thursday March 13 2008A campaign to encourage more women to set up their own business was revealed in the budget.
Women, particularly mothers, will be given advice on how to run a firm, pitch
for bank loans and prepare business plans.
Women will be able to apply if they are thinking of setting up a business, or have already done so but need more investment.
'Women's Business Centres' will be tested to advise women, who oftenlack the confidence to launch their own business, and there will be a mentoring network, with successful female entrepreneurs encouraging other women into business.
Advice will be particularly targeted at new mothers, many of whom are forced to take low-paid jobs because their previous employers refuse to to be flexible about working hours. Setting up their own businesses would enable them to be their own bosses.
At present, just 585,000 of Britain's 4.5million enterprises are run by women. The initiative was welcomed by Calypso Rose, 27, who set up handbag and accessory firm Clippykit four years ago with just £2,500. Now her products are sold in more than 300 outlets across the UK.
Miss Rose, from Fulham in West London, said: 'When I started a grant would have been very helpful. It would be very useful now too. It would help with cash flow, which is a big concern for small businesses.
'But while the Government is helping us this way it is also harming us by insisting on going ahead with the rise in corporation tax. This will hit my business and many of the boutiques which sell my bags.
'They are already suffering as people spend less money because of the credit crunch. I find it a contradictory approach from the Government that claims to be supporting small businesses.'
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Working for Women
Leader The Guardian, Monday September 24 2007
Nobody thought it would be easy, 32 years ago, when the Equal Opportunities Commission first opened its doors. Still, it felt like a new dawn. That was the year when it first became illegal to sack a woman for being pregnant, when statutory maternity pay was introduced, when a woman climbed Everest for the first time and when Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative party. Only a third of the workforce were women, and their pay was barely two-thirds of men's. The EOC was to be both brains and brawn in the fight for equality. But as its critics warned from the outset, there had to be more to the fight than ending overt discrimination. Women were disadvantaged by multiple factors, cultural and structural.
Leader The Guardian, Monday September 24 2007
Nobody thought it would be easy, 32 years ago, when the Equal Opportunities Commission first opened its doors. Still, it felt like a new dawn. That was the year when it first became illegal to sack a woman for being pregnant, when statutory maternity pay was introduced, when a woman climbed Everest for the first time and when Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative party. Only a third of the workforce were women, and their pay was barely two-thirds of men's. The EOC was to be both brains and brawn in the fight for equality. But as its critics warned from the outset, there had to be more to the fight than ending overt discrimination. Women were disadvantaged by multiple factors, cultural and structural.
Neither the Equal Pay Act nor the Sex Discrimination Act nor the EOC could create momentum in a world where men held economic, political and cultural power. So, 32 years on, women in full-time work still earn on average 17% less than men, £330,000 over a lifetime. And for all the excellence of girls' academic results, discrimination appears alongside their first jobs - a discrimination that will only grow as they have children, care for elderly parents, and finally become pensioners themselves. For girls who do not choose higher education, things are worse. They converge on the "five Cs" - cleaning, catering, cashiering, caring and clerking - which condemns them to a life of low pay. Just 22 girls took up plumbing apprenticeships last year. The EOC's research has identified problems, pinned down causes and recommended reforms, and still change is glacially slow. Worse, other factors are holding women back. Class and ethnicity are becoming more and more significant in determining earning power.
At the end of this week the EOC is absorbed into the warm embrace of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights. If the outgoing chair of the EOC has her way it will not disappear without trace. Jenny Watson is admirably clear about the need for mandatory pay reviews, accompanied by a breathing space for employers so that they can deal with pay differentials without the threat of a tribunal.
Pay discrimination, however, is only part of a more fundamental bias - against motherhood. Anticipating it shapes women's career choices, and experience of it fuels the pay gap. The single most important change needed is to raise the status of parenting. In the past 10 years progress has raced away on childcare, parental leave and flexible working. But more needs to be done. If the state does not value parenting, employers will not either. Where parents struggle, children struggle too. Equality starts at home.
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Money men develop a female focus
as women's economic clout grow
Antoinette Odoi The Guardian, Tuesday October 30 2007
The floor is littered with toys and children tussle with each other in a play fight. At the other end of the 28 sq metre room, a woman periodically looks over as she enjoys a cup of coffee in the calming earth tones of her surroundings.
But this is not a creche but a bank - Raiffeisenbank Gastein in Austria. The town of Bad Gastein might be a sleepy looking ski resort with only 5,600 inhabitants but it is home to one of the most innovative banking concepts around: female-oriented banking.
With the introduction of the euro, Raiffeisenbank Gastein's currency exchange business broke away in 2002 leaving a large, unused space.
The banking consultancy Emotion Banking was called in to drum up ideas on how to use the space and increase local business. It found that while 13% of women in the Gastein valley were self-employed and required high-level banking strategies, 50% were housewives with more basic banking needs. The consultancy devised a strategy to target the wealth of opportunity among Gastein's women, and "female-banking" was born.
Now, a year after its official opening, Raiffeisenbank's headquarters has been transformed. It operates a "branch in branch" concept with separate areas devoted to separate clientele. That its female customer base has seen double digit-growth for the first time in 20 years shows female-oriented banking is not about frivolity and bows but profit and the bottom line.
Emotion Banking's chief executive, Christian Rauscher, says that until now banks have failed to tap into the lucrative female market. "Fifty-one per cent of [banking] clients worldwide are female ... more women are standing on their own feet and deciding their own finances ... [banks] tend to address men in their communication, which is not necessarily the best way to be successful."
Glass ceiling
He also makes the point that women have more financial clout than is often attributed to them, for example, overseeing household finances. As more women break through the glass ceiling, it is clear that tailoring services to them will be an expanding area for banks. One UK bank determined to focus on their growing clout is the private bank Coutts.
Sarah Deaves, who became Coutts's first female chief executive, says a spur for the bank is the growing number of rich women in the UK. About one-third of Coutts' 60,000 clients are women.
"Women are increasingly becoming a substantial segment," Ms Deaves says, citing figures from a 2006 Centre for Economic Business Research study, which estimated 53% of millionaires are likely to be female in 2020. Additionally, figures from the independent research firm Datamonitor suggest there are 448,000 women in Britain classified as "high net-worth" (with £200,000 in liquid assets). Of those, 112,000 - or 25% - have £500,000 in liquid assets, the criteria for holding a Coutts account.
The Datamonitor study also revealed the wealth gap between males and females is narrowing. In 2006, the average female millionaire was worth £1.97m, while the figure for men was £2.96m. This compares with £1.28m for women in 1998 and £2.71m for males.
Ms Deaves says there has been a noticeable change in the way women acquire wealth. No longer reliant on divorce settlements or inheritances, women are now making their own money. Some 38% of Coutts' clients gained wealth through salary, 19% did so from their spouse, 7% inherited it and the remainder acquired it through unknown means.
"People are able to make their mark [in business] earlier. Women are coming through in investment banking; they're becoming corporate executives and are earning lots of bonuses," she says.
Coutts' aim is to create a culture that fosters female entrepreneurship. What started as a small lunch programme two years ago has grown into an array of networking events, charity fundraisers and the launch of Coutts Woman online magazine, which had 6,000 hits in July.
The private bank is also making a niche for itself by linking finance to fashion, and is sponsoring an exhibition of designer Matthew Williamson's work at London's Design Museum.
But Catherine Tillotson, a partner at the wealth management consultancy Scorpio Partnership, says private banks are often guilty of "wrap[ping] up their services in pink ... now it's becoming [clearer] the issue is not about whether women should be treated differently. [Banks need] a different marketing approach, rather than different service."
She says British banks were at the vanguard of female-oriented banking 10 years ago but European banks had now moved ahead. "It's a shame because the UK is such a strong financial centre ... and a major honeypot for very high net-worth individuals".
North American banks are also addressing females' needs. Just two decades ago, it was commonplace for a female entrepreneur to have to get her husband to co-sign a loan, says Kris Depencier, national manager of small business and women's markets at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). After setting up a business specifically for women, RBC hoped to address this.
Fifteen years on, the success of women entrepreneurs has shown the idea to be fruitful and still relevant today. "[Women] don't have the same legacy of established networks and availability of mentors that perhaps some of their male colleagues have had," she says "I would suggest that is changing rapidly as more and more women go into business."
Financial education
As in Britain, Canadian women's financial power is growing: between 1991 and 2001, women's self-employment grew 43%, and there are some 821,000 female entrepreneurs in Canada, contributing in excess of C$18bn (£8.58bn) to the economy.
In the US, a financial education programme, Woman & Co, is at the forefront of such banking. The company, which is part of Citigroup, offers advice on issues ranging from childcare to property and has strong leadership to fall back on - its chairwoman, Lisa Caputo, is the former press secretary to Hillary Clinton.
"[When we launched] no company was initiating a real conversation about how women feel about their money," says Ms Caputo. "The challenge was to present a financial service for women in a way that would not be perceived as a traditional service wrapped in pink."
But that does not mean Women & Co shies away from its task, and she says the brand is "unapologetically feminine, confident and inspiring".
Although Women & Co was launched four years ago, Ms Caputo doesn't see any direct competitors, which shows the gap in the worldwide market.
Other countries picking up on the trend include Bangladesh's Grameen Bank - 97% of the microcredit outfit's 7.24 million borrowers are women; Pakistan's First Women Bank and the Dubai Islamic Bank, which offers a women-only service called Johara Banking.
But do female-oriented strategies render women a homogeneous group and contradict their shared underlying mission to emancipate them?
Mr Rauscher disagrees. "[Female banking] is just a concept so employees can be more sensitive to women's lifestyle approaches and the goals and dreams that they have.
"It's still important to ask women individually [what their needs are]."
Antoinette Odoi The Guardian, Tuesday October 30 2007
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17 Ideas To Help Women In Business Make More
Money
Janice Ross www.funding-for-women.com, Tuesday January 21 2008
When you're growing a business, you
often get caught up in the day to day grind, and stop thinking about ways to
build your business.
With that in mind, I've pulled together some key questions that my clients always benefit from answering, and they inevitably go on to make more money!
That might not remove the need to find loans for women, or grants for women for that matter, but at least you could increase your sales and aim for a higher profit!
But remember, not only answer the questions, but ACTION the results!
With that in mind, I've pulled together some key questions that my clients always benefit from answering, and they inevitably go on to make more money!
That might not remove the need to find loans for women, or grants for women for that matter, but at least you could increase your sales and aim for a higher profit!
But remember, not only answer the questions, but ACTION the results!
- What do your customers want?
- Why do you use certain suppliers? What do they do for you that's different?
- Have you asked your suppliers for a discount?
- What systems do you have for generating more sales leads?
- What systems do you have for converting more of those sales leads into customers?
- What systems do you have for getting customers to buy from you more often?
- What systems do you have for getting customers to buy additional products/services?
- What systems do you have for getting customers to spend money on more expensive items?
- What systems do you have for encouraging customers to recommend other people to you?
- What systems do you have for converting customers into raving fans?
- How can you make yours the most talked about business in the industry?
- Who else can you form strategic alliances with in order to grow your sales?
- Who else has contacts who needs what you sell? How can you make them a mutually beneficial offer that is too good to refuse?
- What else can you do that none of your competitors are doing?
- How can you make dealing with you distinctive and memorable? What paradigms can you smash?
- How can you add more value to your customers than anyone else even dares to think about?
- What systems do you have for testing new ideas in a meaningful way without “betting the business” – so that you can discover what works best?
Go for it!
Find more help and support for women through femina.com
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