When I mentioned the title of this piece to a male counterpart, he found my choice of the word ‘plight’ somewhat amusing! But, upon reflection it is rather apt, and I for one can most certainly vouch for that.

Being a woman in business can at times be dangerous (I did once work in the City); is very difficult and when you look at the facts below, we find ourselves in 2022 in rather an unfortunate situation.

History has been blessed with strong female business leaders; Madame Clicquot took the reins of Veuve Clicquot in 1805; my own great grandmother Edith Bailes was an equal business partner with her husband; Dr Prenna Jones, who features in our ‘Queens of Biz’ video, talks about her mother, one of the first women to be accepted to Medical School. These women were the exception to the norm for their generations, true pioneers.

Yes, we have come a long way since the time of our foremothers, but we cannot rest on our laurels when there is so much further to go. Globally, women occupy circa 31% of top roles, a new high, but just 14 of the Fortune 500 companies (3%) and 8 of FTSE 100 companies (8%) have a female CEO.  Government and industry stubbornly fail to grasp the benefits of a more gender equal economy, citing a possible period of over one hundred years to achieve this goal – surely, we can all do better than that. Equality is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue.

A McKinsey Global Institute Report found that $12 trillion could be added to the global GDP by 2025 ‘simply’ by advancing women’s equality.

Regardless of gender, all businesses require funding. And this is the unfortunate bit, we find ourselves in a situation in 2022 where there is a very clear funding gap between male founded and female founded businesses.

The scantness of venture capital that goes to women-owned businesses is pretty appalling and that needs to be turned around. Since 2017 as a demographic, female founders have only scooped up 1.3% of all VC funding in Europe.

Reports show that in the UK women start out with on average 53% less capital than men and that 40% of female entrepreneurs do not seek scale up loans as they expect to be turned down; so less female led businesses are scaling up and reaching their potential.

In the UK male entrepreneurs are 86% more likely to be VC funded, which is strange when you consider that it has been shown that women show a higher return. This situation is clearly not based on the maths! Women’s ability and track record is recognised; there are enough reports out there, yet we still are not treated on a par with our male counterparts.

Women meet unconscious bias and stereotypes in education and society from an early age, so it’s easy to blame the female mindset. How many times have I heard the excuse that ‘women don’t ask’ Actually we do, it’s just that we are not always heard.

Yet despite all of this, there are strong female entrepreneurs out there, doing business every day. With so many hurdles, what drives them, what gets them out of bed in the morning. That’s what interests me.

It is a proven fact that roles models are important to inspire and give us confidence to take that entrepreneurial leap. Certainly, there are no shortage of male business leaders constantly being promoted – Bezos, Buffett, Gates and Musk to name but a few, but what about their female counterparts? Those women business leaders are there – Sarah Blakely, who doesn’t have a pair of Spanx; Denise Coates, Bet365; Arianna Huffington, Thrive Global; Charlotte Tilbury, Charlotte Tilbury Beauty; and one of my personal role models is Helen Swaby, CEO and founder of the De Montfort Fine Art Group, a UK leader.

A recent survey found that 48 per cent of female entrepreneurs cited a lack of mentors and advisors as a restraint to professional growth. A role model does not have to be a global name, they just need to do what they say they do on the tin!

Only by sharing can we help and inspire those who stand beside us today and those who will follow us tomorrow. It is our job to empower each other through the sharing of knowledge and mindset.

I took a moment to sit down with some of my fellow female founders to find out amongst other things what motivates them; call it a quick dip into their mindsets. I captured this in a short video which I hope you will enjoy as we celebrate International Women’s Day. And perhaps one of these fabulous women might become your role model and encourage you to take that leap or to continue along your entrepreneurial path.

I would like to thank House of St Barnabas in Soho for allowing us to use their beautiful building for filming. HOSB is one of the Soho based charities that we, at King of Soho, actively support; headed by CEO Rosie Ferguson, its work and in particular its Employment Academy helps break the cycle of homelessness that too many unfortunately face.

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The plight of the female founder

10 July 2019, I found myself on a podium proudly sponsoring and presenting the inaugural Published Prize for the Comedy Women In Print Awards (CWIP), brainchild of the absolutely fabulous actress, author and stand-up Helen Lederer.

As I stood before a room packed with beautiful, creative & talented women, all there to support & encourage each other onto greater things I was truly inspired and just a little bit in awe. I heard stories about scripts & books being written, campaigns to bring awareness to female Issues which nobody wants to talk about.

Books, you might say were my first love. As a child growing up in a large, busy and extremely noisy world I was often to be found under my duvet reading a book. Then I discovered boys, business and gin in that order. And my passion for gin, you might say, following the somewhat clichéd rules on ‘the circle of life’ brought me back to my first love books.

The road that led me to CWIP started in the King of Soho Winter Gin Palace. Nestled in a side street in London’s creative heart, Soho, Helen and I were simply catching up over a pink gin and tonic. As she started to tell me about CWIP and her vision to delight, empower and bring recognition to funny women writers my heartfelt reaction was ‘how can I help, what do you need?’.

Having spent the last 7 years building my own business I understand the tenacity, commitment & sacrifices needed to turn ‘that’ creative vision into a reality. And as fate would have it, having achieved some entrepreneurial success of my own, I found myself in the wonderful position where I was able to put pen to paper and sign five cheques for the winning group of very talented female authors.

My business pledged the prize money, oodles of pink gin, love and support. After all as women if we don’t support each other then what’s the point.

Saying that when chatting to me the statistics were in Helen’s favour on this one, apparently 64% of donations are made by women. Studies show that women entrepreneurs are more likely to ‘give back’ than their male counterparts.

Typically, female entrepreneurs have to start businesses with only half as much capital as men, so perhaps the reason for giving back is empathetic because we have to fight so much harder in the first place.

Sometimes it is difficult to focus on the positives in my own industry, skipping past the male bias as a way to downgrade it, in the hope that ‘if you say it often enough, it makes it so’. Only last month I sat in the audience at an industry event and was subjected to an all male discussion panel using the term ‘me too’ completely out of context.

Hey guys, it was really not funny – ‘#MeToo’ is a watershed moment in the ‘women’s movement’ and there was not one woman in the audience who did not cringe.

In recent times we have witnessed a positive societal shift and Helen by successfully bringing CWIP to life is one of the pioneers; she started working on CWIP about five years ago – which is a reminder to all of us that whether it be about change or ventures these things do take time and in the words of Helen she became “compulsive, obsessed, persistent and annoying – so I just cracked on with it”.

A century or so ago my great grandmother, Edith Bailes, was shunned by her own family due to her success in business and even my entrepreneurial mother didn’t talk about it until a couple of years ago; generations later it was still a family taboo. Yes, we have moved on from those times but the reality is that we are not quite there yet………

Outside this warm circle of funny literary and stand-up females the attitude I met was ‘the same old same old’. Credit from media partners and the like, was first and foremost given to ‘the men in grey suits’. I had to fight to be recognised for my contribution as both sponsor of the published prize and as a bonafide female entrepreneur

The errors came in and we fought tooth & nail to correct them, to be heard – Theo Paphitis we love you, but you didn’t sponsor all the prizes! Theo (of Ryman) as another prize sponsor was feted and commended and I was left in the shadows by men and women alike – I had even put a grey dress on for the occasion!

Helen’s motivation in establishing these awards was that comedy prizes ‘tend to go to men simply because they are men’ – the irony here should not be lost. I could have run down Conduit Street naked it wouldn’t have made any difference. Seriously though, this is not the first time I have found myself in this particular situation and it’s no laughing matter……. they do say progress is a long road! But how long?

I would like to think that so long as women like me continue to ‘walk the talk’ by supporting and inspiring all women to follow their dreams then perhaps one day the woman in the grey dress will prevail.

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The woman in the grey dress

Bearing in mind that I am a dedicated and passionate business woman and that this is my first column for ‘Business Matters’ it would be odd not to give a nod to a subject matter which has been consistently hitting the headlines – ‘Women’. We certainly seem to be the topic of conversation this year!

Who knew that it would take nearly 100 years after the first batch of votes were handed out in women in the UK for the World to wake up to the fact that we should in the workplace be paid the same amount of respect and money as our male counterparts. I have never seen myself as a flag bearing feminist but who could not feel a deep affinity with the current mood.

Even Piers Morgan sat on Breakfast TV at 7.30 in the morning and declared himself a ‘feminist’.

Last week the headlines were dominated by the debate on equal pay. For 47 years, it has been illegal to pay men and women different rates for the same job. Nevertheless, as the April deadline approached and the final reports on gender pay difference from large firms came in it was clear that pay inequality is still very much there.

But as women we march on and I mean that literally. Women’s marches attract huge crowds. In 2018 we have already seen hundreds of thousands of women taking to the streets for marches across the World both in January and in March (Women’s Day). And the banners and rally cries have definitely been out in force: –

‘Little Girls With Dreams Become Women With Vision’

‘For Most Of History Anonymous Was A Women’ – Virginia Woolf

In the last couple of years, advertising agencies have certainly excelled themselves as big corporations and government have visibly embraced the message that it is OK for girls to challenge the status quo. We have seen many creative campaigns aiming to empower and encourage women: – ‘This Girl Can’, Sport England; #LikeAGirl, Procter & Gamble; “I Will What I Want”, Under Armour; “United by Half”, United Colors of Benetton – launched originally in India the idea behind this campaign is that no gender is greater than the other and that brings me to the story of Edith Bailes.

Recently I was asked what was different about me – “Why are you, Alex Robson, an entrepreneur?”. So, I decided to look back at my own family, my DNA, to find out who were the pioneers hiding amongst our female ranks. That is when I discovered the story of my Great Grandmother Edith Bailes. Way back in the 19^th century she was an equal business partner with my Great Grandfather George. They set-up together and ran together a printing, publishing and book binding business. A company which prospered for well over one hundred years, long after they were no longer with us.

A definite ‘This Girl Can’ / ‘United by Half’ story. On the one hand without George’s liberalism, foresight and support this story would not have been possible. But without Edith where would George have been? Success in business is about the right team. A vice versa situation. But what is really interesting is that until a few weeks ago I had not heard about Edith’s role in the prosperity of our family, so Virginia Woolf was right! “For most of history anonymous was a Women”.

Give and take, vice versa, it’s about the societal / business team. It’s not just about women it is about empowering society as a whole, propelling us all to be a better place. It has to work for everyone.

“Behind every great man is a great woman” is a thing of the past, today we stand side by side.

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Beside every great woman is a great man