27% of business leaders in France are women. While a large proportion of entrepreneurs are hard hit by the crisis, women business leaders are the first to be affected. Explanations and avenues for reflection with Rebecca Amsellem, creator of the Les Glorieuses newsletter and Marie Eloy, founder of the women's network Bouge ta box.
The economic crisis engendered by Covid-19 has highlighted the still significant inequalities between men and women entrepreneurs. Between mental burden and lack of funding, business leaders suffer more from the crisis than their male counterparts. In April, a survey carried out by the Bouge ta box network among some 500 VSE executives revealed that 40% of them had lost more than 70% of their turnover in one month. More than half of the business leaders surveyed (54%) believed their company was threatened by bankruptcy. With the new confinement in place since Thursday evening, how to support and help businesses created by women to take their heads out of the water?
Women entrepreneurs weakened by Covid-19
Forced to juggle household chores and homework, two-thirds of business leaders reduced their working time to four hours a day during confinement, according to the Lab 'Move your box study. And the deconfinement has not changed much. With the gradual resumption of school and school holidays, "The business leaders had 6 months, from March to September, without turnover or with a very low turnover", worries Marie Eloy, founder of the women's networks Femmes de Bretagne and Bouge ta box.
For Rebecca Amsellem, economist, feminist activist and creator of the “Les Glorieuses” newsletter, the pandemic crisis could also give rise to a new generation of entrepreneurs. “There is an entrepreneurship that we talk about less often and it is entrepreneurship suffered by women. There are women who decide to become entrepreneurs, especially within microstructures, in order to be able to adapt their professional life to their personal life or following an economic layoff ", she advances. If women entrepreneurs suffer more from the crisis, it is also because they are more present in very small businesses, whose closure rate turned out to be particularly high during confinement. “This summer, 47% of TPEs worn by women declared themselves to be in danger by the end of the year. Small businesses are the lifeblood of towns and villages, and we can see that with this crisis. We absolutely have to support them and the problem is that women entrepreneurs are very poorly represented in employers' organizations, in branch unions, which means that aid is not directed towards them. We are talking about loans, aid for the digitization of businesses … This is why we must ensure that there is fairness, equality and a good distribution of aid that will be brought to companies ” insists Marie Eloy.
Equality of sectors and equal conditionality
For women entrepreneurs, financing is the sinews of war. The pandemic in particular accentuates the inequalities of sectors. Most business leaders choose areas of the economy that are still under-valued such as health, care professions, social, education, household services, or even catering, little popular with investors. , but essential for the world of tomorrow. “While the privileged sectors are high technology or aeronautics, which are eminently masculine, or those which are 'scalable'” (scalability, model of rapid growth, editor's note), notes Rebecca Amsellem. “It's a term that I hate and that people kept telling me at the start of my entrepreneurial project. 'Les Glorieuses is nice but is it scalable?' "
We are much more questioned about the risks we are going to take as a business manager when a man is more encouraged to make people dream
The lack of funding for businesses led by women plays a big role in the inequalities between men and women entrepreneurs. "It's something that is intangible but real" confirms Marie Eloy. "We are much more questioned about the risks we will take as a business manager when a man is more encouraged to make people dream", she adds. The same goes for the creator of Les Glorieuses: “For fundraising, absurd questions are asked to women 'how are you going to do in a crisis?', 'How are you going to make it scalable?'. For a man, it will be 'how are you going to revolutionize the market', 'what is your vision'. It’s symptomatic of what we are going through ”. To deal with the Coronavirus epidemic, the Government has put in place an exceptional recovery plan of 100 billion euros. The problem ? Women are largely forgotten in this economic plan, as Les Glorieuses underlines, which is launching a petition for a feminist economic recovery plan. “There are several ways to respond to this stimulus plan proposal, either we decide to reduce the budget devoted to these sectors (male), or we decide to include in the allocation criteria of loans guaranteed by the 'State and subsidies the fact of having parity on the steering committee, the executive committee, the board of directors and in terms of entrepreneurship, to favor both women and men ”, Rebecca Amsellem details.
See: Rebecca Amsellem talks to us about pay inequalities
Among the other solutions proposed, specific quotas for granting loans for companies headed by women or even parity implementation plans for companies with a low proportion of women and which receive state aid. On June 11, the High Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCE) published a note entitled "Equal conditionality as a motor for exiting the crisis". It is "Condition the allocation of public funds or administrative authorizations to compliance with parity rules or actions for equality between women and men, explains the HCE", which has been defending this principle since 2016.
Promoting female entrepreneurship
For Marie Eloy, aid should be targeted, especially loans, ensure equity in the territories and encourage women to join networks, and especially not remain isolated during this period."It is absolutely necessary to ensure that aid reaches women who have been in much more danger than men since the crisis", she argues. “We have a real opportunity today to make sure we give a boost, where for years we have crushed the competition by giving more to men than to women, and there, we can change that”, says Rebecca Amsellem.
What if we created business showers instead of baby showers?
According to the economist, we must promote female entrepreneurship, rather than asking women to adapt to masculine codes. "I think that women do very well what they do but that we are just in a society that does not value the voice of women", she specifies. “There is something that I like to offer: what if we decided to promote women who are going to have children as much as women who create businesses? And create new business showers instead of baby showers? To think that when you have a girlfriend who wants to launch her business or then, at the moment, a friend whose business is in crisis, have Zoom meetings by bringing together people in our entourage who are likely to help her ”. In short, stick together, and create an "entrepreneurial sorority", says our expert.
Supporting female entrepreneurship means enhancing its strength and not constantly pushing women back to their brakes. “I don't see a lack of confidence, I see a lot of entrepreneurial dynamics, the problem is the biases in society that women must compensate for.”, notes Marie Eloy. “The brake is not self-censorship, it is not that women do not feel capable of it, it is that they actually have less outside help to enable them to do so. arrive, adds Rebecca Amsellem, But we are seeing the emergence of more and more organizations and associations that help women entrepreneurs and I think these are the organizations that will give birth to a new generation of women entrepreneurs ”. And add: “Women entrepreneurs will respond more to needs that will improve the lives of women”.