Women represent 32% of the eCommerce sellers online. While that is a much higher percentage that the number of women that are found in C-suite jobs, it still places women in the minority. This article in Entrepreneur encourages women in eCommerce to seek each other out for mentoring and support. The article states, “By building your community around other women, you can unlock the hidden power of wealth through shared strategies, tools and hidden secrets.”
This Newsweek piece that was released for International Women’s Day highlights seven women who have defied the odds within STEM fields (only around 30 percent of STEM researchers globally are women). The article features some well known women and some women that you might not have heard of yet.
In this piece in Entrepreneur from December 2016, founder and CEO of WordSmithRapport, Karima J. Mariama-Arthur (who is also an eCornell program facilitator!) shared three challenges of entrepreneurship. While the article is a few years old, her words still ring true to entrepreneurs today. Mariama-Arthur states that fear, distractions and work ethic are the three biggest hurdles. If anything, those hurdles are even more present during the past year of navigating COVID!
Many adults need to take an off-ramp from the professional workplace during their careers. Birthing/caring for children, looking after aging family members, following a partner due to dual-career challenges and military service are just a few of the reasons why people – especially women – may find themselves reducing hours or taking a complete leave of absence from full time work. The demands placed on women have become even more apparent during COVID when virtual schooling and the lack of available childcare have placed more pressure on parents as they try to keep all the balls in the air.
One opportunity that may help more women re-enter the worplace as we find our way out of the COVID tunnel is the concept of “returnships”. Returnship programs are similar to internships but are meant specifically for those who are looking to rejoin the workforce after taking time away. This link from August 2020 shares a list of 15 companies that have instituted returnship programs. In addition, this piece from Fortune shares thoughts on how this model may be particularly useful for women in a post-COVID workforce.
If you have found yourself doing more walking/jogging during COVID – either because your gym is closed or you are just looking to get out of your home for a bit – perhaps you have started listening to more podcasts.
Here is a list of the top 35 “women in business” podcasts. Each podcast listed includes information on how often new episodes are dropped, the number of followers/subscribers and what year the podcast originated. Definitely worth scrolling through if you are looking for something new to put on your listening list!
This piece from the Motley Fool highlights ten female entrepreneurs to follow as we head into 2021. The piece has links to different podcasts hosted by these women as well as links to resources and their twitter feeds. These leaders include:
At the end of February, Rosalind Brewer, who is currently COO at Starbucks, will leave that position to become CEO of drugstore chain Walgreens. Once in this post, she will be the only Black woman currently serving as a Fortune 500 CEO, and just the third Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 firm in history. (There are currently only 37 women in CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies)
According to this CNBC article, during a recent speech, Brewer commented on the reality that many women experience bias and gender discrimination in the workplace. She said that her most critical message to women in business is to “stay steadfast” and know that “your voice matters.”
According to this article from Time, in December 2020, America lost over 140,000 jobs – and all those jobs belonged to women. It’s no surprise, that the Washington Post just reported that this has likely been partially responsible for the “pandemic-fueled rise in female entrepreneurship”. This Post piece highlights stories of women who either saw changes in the economic landscape that encouraged them to launch their ventures or were forced to pivot and turn to entrepreneurship because of job losses and stay-at-home orders.
“Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity” is a New York Times best-selling book published in 2017 by Kim Scott. The term “radical candor” is defined by Scott as the ability to challenge directly and show that you care personally at the same time. While that seems like it should be every leader’s goal, the reality is that being radically candid is challenging – often because it is counterintuitive to how we have been raised.
Scott breaks down the concept of radical candor and outlines the other quadrants where we can find ourselves in this six-minute video. If you want to dig a little deeper, she has a podcast and a blog as well.
In Spring of 2020, Dr. Gabrielle Page-Wilson, Dr. Samira Brown and business executive Alexandra Stanton, launched Little Lives PPE, a Black and woman-led company changing the personal protective equipment (PPE) landscape for American families and communities.
In this webinar, Dr. Page-Wilson and Ms. Stanton discuss the challenges of launching a PPE company during the COVID pandemic and how the business and product lessons they learned can apply to any aspiring entrepreneur who is thinking about launching, managing, or scaling a business during this unprecedented time.