Stop fixing the women

At an event I have recently attended #AnneBoden, CEO and Founder of Starling Bank, said something that stuck with me.

After an endless chain of questions about the particularities of being a women entrepreneur raising capital in the UK market, she almost exasperated mentioned that we should all stop fixing the women.

Women are just as capable as men, in all life and business settings.

The fact that on average women have to meet twice as many investors to get a term sheet or have twice as many meetings to secure investment does not make it a women problem.

Our women entrepreneurs as just as skilled and experienced, and their technology solutions have the similar potential of success in the global market. We should stop fixing women by shouting about their ability to present, or sell, or persuade.

The thing that we do need fixing is our funding and support system.

It starts by identifying the factors preventing women from transitioning to entrepreneurship, and the funding gap.

It continues with designing programmes that fast-track those fundable proposals and plugging those entrepreneurs to the whole ecosystem. Understandably, measuring the funding gap, income gap and socioeconomic factors that have maintained the homeostasis of our system, will not yield any benefit. Admittedly, after at least three decades of academic research, we should have a clear picture of the problem at hand, yet we all continue to debate the…