Why women start businesses
Yesterday I gave a talk about About pages and said business owners need to share why they started their business. What’s your origin story?
The truth is we all have more than one origin story. The one I was encouraging people to share was about their inspiration for their business. What they saw in the market, the difference they wanted to make.
But we all have a much more personal origin story. The reason many of us started our own businesses was because working for someone else didn’t work for us.
For so many women, employment doesn’t work because they might:
- Have caring responsibilities and need to be able to take time off for appointments or be on call
- Be dealing with unexpected life events
- Have a chronic illness, often hidden, like endometriosis
- Have developed insomnia
- Be going through perimenopause or menopause and find they suddenly have debilitating symptoms
- Have moved to support a partner in their job and found there wasn’t paid employment in their field in their new location
- Have become a parent and found the cost of nursery fees is the same as their salary
- Have been told they have to wear clothing they find uncomfortable at work, like heels, regardless of whether it actually affects their ability to do their job
- Have had their ideas dismissed, only to find they company went with them when a male colleague made the suggestions instead
- Face discrimination due to their age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or a disability.
- Have been told they’re too much
- Have been told they’re not enough
So many brilliant, high achieving women find themselves squeezed out of employment through no fault of their own.
And then people look down on their ‘lifestyle business’ when that business enables them to have a life, financial independence, pay taxes, and boost the economy.
International Women’s Day 2025 is about rights, equality and empowerment.
You’d think that in 2025, we wouldn’t need to keep having these conversations but we do because all women have to fight to be able to be themselves and live life on their own terms.
