By Marie-Reine Seshie, Head of Growth at SuppliedShop.com: Supplied makes it easier for small boutique owners around the world to access high-quality, affordable wholesale boutique items, whether to stock their physical store or IG shop.
Growing up, my mum was a teacher at a senior high school. At the same time, she had a small-scale poultry farm at home, sold water and ice cubes and ice cream. And so did the many other women and mothers around us, many of whom ran multiple small businesses to provide for their families!
My sisters and I would go on to engage in small businesses at various stages, whether it was at university where I was selling eggs to support myself or the present day, when my sisters currently sell African fabrics, operate a delivery business and run a handmade children’s clothing line. I, myself head marketing at a rapidly-expanding supply chain called Supplied, aimed at connecting a dynamic network of factories with even more female entrepreneurs! And I’m surrounded by strong, entrepreneurial women here as well: the Chief of Staff to the CEO, Sarah Cummings, is a Chinese-American who is just as driven to empower women as I am!
The world needs to start seeing women in that light and begin making bets on us — especially minority women like myself. I am so glad those conversations are happening now — minority women’s domination of the entrepreneurship landscape is only “suddenly” apparent because, for a long time, nobody was really paying attention to us, despite the fact that women are innately innovative thinkers and collaborative problem solvers. Women have always possessed a lot of grit, emotional intelligence and have always been entrepreneurial.
So why is this happening now?
First of all, the traditional work environment has not been friendly to women employees, especially minorities. Women face unconscious bias and discrimination, including assumptions that women will leave the workforce to have children or that women with children should earn less than men: in a 2017 survey, the Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of women said they have experienced gender discrimination at work compared to 20 percent of men who said the same. And in minority communities, home life can exacerbate these inequalities. They straddle many other responsibilities, often as single mothers — taking care of the home, supporting their extended families, et cetera. With traditional work requiring women to be in the office from 9am to 5pm, while not receiving the appropriate compensation, women are constrained in time and also income. Many women, especially minorities, are therefore taking on entrepreneurship to be able to avoid the lapses and unfairness entrenched in traditional work environments.
The good news? The rise of social media has helped female entrepreneurs be able to build and grow their businesses. We now have the ability to sell live on Facebook and Instagram and even create storefronts on these platforms all from home — giving some women some flexibility to juggle multiple activities. Take Viya for instance, China’s star saleswoman, who runs a sixty billion-dollar world of live online shopping. Each night, her audience places orders worth millions of dollars. On Singles Day, China’s biggest shopping event of the year, she did more than three billion yuan in sales.
And social media has also helped many women entrepreneurs build support groups for themselves, where they share ideas and help each others’ businesses. There is a whole world of Facebook Groups and Instagram pages that are just women supporting women. At Supplied, we started The Supplied Family Group on Facebook, and in less than a month with little advertisement, we have over 600 members. Most members are minorities. It’s a pure joy to see women truly collaborating and supporting each other — it reminds me of something Sarah once shared with me, a popular saying by Mao Zedong: “women hold up half of the sky.”
Secondly, the socioeconomic and political climate we are in now is giving rise to conversations about women empowerment, with overdue focus on minority women. This is caused in part due to the fact that the US is undergoing major demographic shifts. Women are now more likely to graduate from college and more of them are attending. Census projections predict that women of color will make up the majority of women by 2045. And as the US grows more diverse, so will the contribution of women of color and minorities generally. Women entrepreneurs are “an underlooked asset class that is overperforming,” in the words of Jane VC founder Jennifer Neundorfer.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, is the raw grit minority women possess. It’s tough enough to belong to a minority group, period. But being a woman and belonging to a minority group is a whole different ball game. As a minority woman, you grow up having to truly fight for your place in society, to be noticed, to be given equal opportunities. You have to give 1000% to be rewarded for 100% and be respected for your work. And what this does is build a lot of grit and perseverance. You find ways to do things efficiently and effectively. You learn how best to distribute your energy. These are the very skills that make great leaders and entrepreneurs: grit, perseverance, emotional intelligence, efficiency, knowing how to distribute your energy! These skill sets, combined with the right opportunities and conversations,and support system, are why minority women really and truly dominate the entrepreneurship landscape.
There is still work to be done to truly provide the support they need. Particularly, there is a huge gap in access to finance and resources that allow minority women to really scale their businesses. Having these conversations is a good starting point, but there is more work to be done in opening up avenues to support minority owned businesses. According to a report by Brookings, “The U.S. could have millions more businesses if women and minorities became entrepreneurs at the same rate as white men”. It is a fact, that women, when given equal opportunities at entrepreneurship, are a true catalyst for economic growth and change, and the data supports this.