With this International Women’s Day theme of #EmbraceEquity, I’m grateful we’re finally focusing on the subject we’ve been working on for a decade at IMPERIA. As you’ve heard me say often, a seat at the table will never be enough.
So what does it look like to embrace equity for women founders?
We can put as many women in a room as you like, but because they’re operating inside of a system that rewards male-oriented leadership, communication, and confidence (even if falsely rooted), we are fighting a losing battle. Here’s how that shows up:
Women founders are misinterpreted, our expertise is called into question, and we are asked preventative questions about how we’ll keep our companies from failing, rather than getting a fist bump for our scale projections.
And? We’re STILL asked — in the pitch room — who’s watching the children, or how many babies we plan to have. I know these stories because the female founders I work with every day tell them to me.
So let this be the beginning of a different path, where we’re actually dismantling systems that, frankly, suck. Let’s embrace equity for women founders in a way that creates real, meaningful change. In the interim, we’ll be here at IMPERIA creating ways to address the system as it currently exists, because a lifetime is only so long.
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