On September 29^th, the Gender Equality Coalition of Ontario is hosting its second  one day, virtual and in-person “Intentional, Intersectional, Inclusion” conference at Fanshawe College in celebration of Gender Equality Week 2022.

But who founded this new organization? Why now? And what’s the difference between feminist organizations and gender equality organizations?

To find out, we spoke with Dr. Amanda Zavitz, the Coalition’s Leadership chair, small business owner, former small-town truck stop waitress, scholar, Marxist, labour activist, mother of two, conference lead and professor of sociology and women’s studies at Fanshawe College for over 20 years.

LiisBeth:  Tell us about the coalition—how did it get started?

Zavitz: So the gender equality coalition is an Ontario registered nonprofit organization based in London, Ontario. Linda Davis and Danny Bartlett co-founded the organization in 2019 because while there are several women’s advancement groups in the area, there was no organization that fought for gender equality for all genders, including men. The coalition is funded in part by the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE). Any individual or organization can become a member. At present, coalition members include Champions of Change (London), Urban League (London) and Unicef (Western University). 

I joined as Chair of the nine person (five women, four men) board in 2020. Coalition members believe that gender inequality, patriarchy, colonialism and white supremacy also negatively impacts men. In feminist spaces, we focus on women and talk a lot about the social construction of femininity being damaging, but we also think that the social construction of masculinity is equally damaging for men and boys. We believe this gap needs to be addressed.

LiisBeth:  What does the gender equality coalition do that feminist organizations don’t already do?

Zavitz: I think that one of the things our coalition achieves is that it helps us move beyond the ill-informed, but still broadly held stereotype that feminism is anti-men. It invites a broader, intersectional conversation about gender and creates a space where we can talk about how its social construction impacts all genders. So by simply saying that we think that men are affected by gender inequality as well, we create a space where men, including queer and trans men feel as though they can be part of the feminist conversation and be heard. Since we’ve started, I’ve noticed it really does allow all people, men, women, gender, diverse to let their guard down and feel as though they can be part of a conversation about challenging gender constructs together.

LiisBeth:  The idea of gender equality organizations, for many feminists, is problematic. Some feminists see it as watered-down, corporatized version of feminism (all genders matter) which detracts from the real and more dire, urgent work of ending the systemic oppression of women. Thoughts?

Zavitz: I don’t necessarily disagree, but we ultimately need to have gender equality for all in order to realize the ultimate feminist dream, or at least to move the feminist movement forward sustainably. I don’t see the two things as separate. So, I get what feminism is. I understand the importance of women-only, women-led spaces. Women will always be the torch bearers of the fight. I am an active participant in the feminist movement, but we need an evolved feminist movement that has gender equality for all at its roots.

If we look at where we are today, rollbacks included, we actually need to have a feminist movement that’s more inclusive of men. Not because men need help getting equality, but because men are also impacted by gender constructs in ways that allow them to justify their role in the perpetuating harms and prevents them from participating as informed allies in the feminist movement. The gender equality space can serve as an alternative gateway for men who are keen to learn more about feminism—and want to amplify its work.

LiisBeth:  Men have always been part of, or served as allies in the feminist struggle. There were men supporting the suffragettes, men marching alongside women in the 1960’s and again in the women’s march of 2016. Allyship between male-led social justice organizations has always been there. And look where we still are.

Zavitz: That’s true. If we look today, we find some men still marching alongside a lot of women. At a recent protest against sexual assault at Western university where I work, men were included in the organizing. There were some men that were marching alongside a lot of women.

We are not saying men have not been allies or supportive of feminist work. But not enough of them have signed on to tip the scales. What’s different about our organization is we’re willing to understand the extent to which men, your average Dick and John, have also been impacted by systems of oppression and make this part of the feminist conversation. We know that today’s definition of masculinity remains toxic for men and boys. By creating a space where all genders can talk about this together, we believe we can mobilize higher levels of allyship.

There’s been so much debate about what feminism is and what feminism isn’t. For me, feminism is about ending inequality and all kinds of systemic oppressions. And if we really understand that, then we know we have to include men in not only the discussion, but also in the movement.  I argue in class that the next wave of feminism should be a much more gender-diverse, collective movement; An inclusive, intersectional gender movement of both individuals and allied organizations that work together intentionally to dismantle power structures that are actually killing us all.

LiisBeth:  Wow. OK. We hear you! Now tell us what you are most excited about regarding the upcoming conference.

Zavitz:  Oh, so many things! But I will mention two.

First, our speaker lineup is incredible. Secondly, our activists-at-large program design feature.

On the speaker front, we have Jeff Perera, a well-known North American activist who talks about the construction of gender, helpful versus harmful ideas of manhood, race and masculinity, the importance of empathy-building and who calls on men to help end gender-based violence. We also welcome the incredible Dr. Raven Sinclair who will provide an indigenous perspective on gender equality, and Teneile Warren, playwright, community organization, plus intersectional equity educator, transformative justice practitioner specializing in anti-Black racism education who will talk about how gender was built on the foundation of racism.

The activist-at-large idea is a new exciting experiment! Here we invited well-known, and lesser-known feminist, anti-oppression activists and authors to participate in the conference, not as speakers but as people charged with the task of mingling with the attendees and participating in, versus leading, round table discussions. We want them to share their wisdom but also encourage connections that continue to develop well beyond the event. We believe that this is better done on the floor rather than mediated by the stage. Among those attending as activists in residence are Joseph Pazanno, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) professional, strategist, and attorney, Judy Rebick (socialist feminist, reproductive rights), Nora Loreto (feminist and union organizing) and Lori Fox (queer, working-class rights and anti-capitalism).

Oh! And we also have a terrific panel discussion focused on the future of feminism.

It’s going to be a great day!

LiisBeth:  It sure sounds like it! And we will be there. Thank you for speaking with us Dr. Zavitz!

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Publisher’s Note:  This is a sponsored feature. Thank you to the Gender Equality Coalition of Ontario for its support of LiisBeth.com. You can still register for the event. Price is $25.00 for students or $75.00 for general admission. 

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The post Opening the Door for Men? appeared first on LiisBeth.

Amidst a week of news about mass shootings, UN reports about food instability due to climate change, Trump’s approval rating increase, and the firing of women of colour at Equal Voice, news about a new investment, even if small, in Ontario’s social enterprise space comes as a welcome relief.

Clearly, we need social entrepreneurs more than ever.

Earlier today, in London, Ont., the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion, announced a new $3.6 million investment in diverse women social entrepreneurs in Ontario as part of the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) initiative that seeks to double the number of women-owned businesses by 2025.

The funds will go towards the creation of the Women of Ontario Social Enterprise Network (WOSEN) and the development of a fresh, sophisticated social enterprise entrepreneurship program based on inclusive design and Indigenous approaches to venture creation. The WOSEN project aims to support 150 new women-led social enterprises, as well as expand 75 existing ones. It will also offer 10 women-centred innovation training sessions to 250 people, training for 35 business coaches, and connect $3.5 million of capital through the Women Impact Investor Network.

That’s a lot of impact for just $7 million. But the social enterprise space is used to making a dollar stretch.

The WOSEN project is led by Pillar Nonprofit Network (London, Ont.), a well-established network of more than 600 non-profits plus its all-star list of project partners that include The Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), NORDIK Institute, Okwaho Equal Source, Lean4Flourishing, Eve-Volution Inc (LiisBeth Media’s parent entity), plus The Social Enterprise Institute and the SVX. The startup consortium will be collaborating with others to develop the new program plus outsource the delivery of that program through various partners over the next three years.

Why Women?

The need for a women-centred program and investment has long been clear to the social entrepreneurship community in Ontario. Women have dominated the for-profit and non-profit social enterprise space. Tonya Surman, founder and CEO of the Centre for Social Innovation, has worked to support over 5,000 social-purpose companies since 2008. The CSI is home to nearly 1,000 organizations, 2,700 social innovators, and according to Surman, 58 percent of their members are women. “CSI has been female-led for 15 years and we know first-hand the challenges of getting the support to be able to grow our businesses,” says Surman.

One of the most significant barriers to sustainable growth for women social entrepreneurs, apart from access to aligned capital, is finding relevant programming, mentors with the right experience, and a supportive network.

Research shows that many women social entrepreneurs eagerly line up to participate in mainstream startup support programs, only to find that the programming is one-size-fits-all or tech and venture capital pipeline–oriented. Only 44 percent of 117 startup support organizations in Ontario consider gender and diversity when recruiting or selecting clients. Fewer still have diverse, women-centred or purpose-led enterprise programming.

Additionally, access to relevant programming of any kind has been uneven across the province. Rural areas are often left out. Diverse and Indigenous women have expressed concerns that existing programming privileges colonial approaches to venture design, leadership, and operations, which results in their reduced participation. As a result, both material economic growth—and social impact—have been left on the table.

What’s Unique?

The program aims to be the first of its kind to incorporate Indigenous values, practices, and wisdom into the design right from the start. The programming is also aiming for 70 percent participation by underrepresented women entrepreneurs, including those with disabilities, Indigenous women, women-identified, two-spirited women, women in rural or remote regions, and those who identify as visible minorities and newcomers.

The Indigenous component of the program’s development will be led by Okwaho Equal Source, an Indigenous-owned boutique consulting enterprise created by Shyra and Rye Barberstock. Shyra Barberstock, who is the president and CEO, has long been part of efforts to support and improve access to relevant programming for Indigenous entrepreneurs. “As an Anishinaabe woman, and social entrepreneur myself, I am happy to see us finally have the opportunity to develop a program that embeds, versus tacks on, Indigenous values and concepts when it comes to venture creation,” says Barberstock. “After all, Indigenous peoples have been entrepreneurs for a long time. We know a thing or two about creating economic opportunities that help communities flourish while also sustaining the environment on Turtle Island.”

Innovating Entrepreneurship Programming

Indigenous entrepreneurship programming designed expressly for Indigenous entrepreneurs and funding for such initiatives has been on the rise across Ontario over the past five years. Initiatives like Sunshine Tenasco’s Pow Wow Pitch, Algonquin College’s Institute for Indigenous Entrepreneurship, and Toronto Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam’s proposal for the Indigenous Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship all serve as prime examples.

However, no province-wide program has, as of yet, attempted to create an entirely new program from scratch that blends and builds on both Indigenous and feminine wisdom.

Andre Vashist, Director of Social Innovation at Pillar Nonprofit Network, says the approach to economic development has been missing an inclusive and Indigenous lens. “In the era of truth and reconciliation, we should be open to the knowledge, wisdom, and help by the longest living community on this land. As we are tied to land, whether we call it Canada or Turtle Island, there are many practices and teachings that can benefit our society’s economic strategy. This includes a more holistic approach that combines financial, social, and environmental considerations,” says Vashist.

Ondine Hogeboom and Ellen Martin, Co-Directors of Lean4Flourishing, points out that the exciting thing about this project is that the funding is not about delivering standard programming fare to an underrepresented group. Hogeboom adds, “We have the opportunity to work with the social enterprise community to co-create an entirely new innovative system of supports and curriculum that is grounded in current social, political, and environmental realities. This is IP [intellectual product] that, if proven effective, could be exported across Canada and beyond.”

Joanna Reynolds, Director of Social Enterprise at CSI, notes that WOSEN will enable CSI to work directly with women social entrepreneurs with a focus on helping racialized, newcomer, and Indigenous women gain equitable access to business acceleration supports. “The fact that WOSEN’s partners are all committed to learning from traditional Indigenous knowledge in order to embody the next economy, one that is regenerative, equitable, and prosperous for all, is also inspiring,” says Reynolds.

Overall, this initiative, according to Lore Wainwright, Interim Executive Director of Pillar Nonprofit Network, will help us build even stronger partnerships across the province, from rural to urban communities. “We can support a diverse population of women who want to contribute positive economic and social impact,” says Wainwright.

Creating a financially sustainable enterprise creates measurable social benefit, especially in a society that still thinks investing in social enterprises is just a new form of philanthropy versus real business. Being a woman, especially a woman experiencing intersecting oppressions, generates additional barriers.

Sure, $7 million in combined new investment over three years is not a game-changer in dollar terms when you consider investments made in other sectors. But perhaps the little innovative program that comes out of it will be.

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Additional WES Investments Announced This Week:

Minister Ng announces Women Entrepreneurship Strategy investments (August 8, 2019)

Also, the following women-owned-or-led businesses received up to $100,000 through the Women Entrepreneurship Fund to help them grow their business and reach new export markets:

• Shaw’s Ice Cream, located in St. Thomas, Ont., will launch new products, set up an innovation lab for product development, and create six new jobs
• Borm Capital, located in Aylmer, Que., in collaboration with ETBO Tool & Die, also located in Aylmer, will acquire a power generator, improve production processes, expand exports to the European Union, and create 10 new jobs
• Stiris Research, located in London, Ont., will commercialize an artificial intelligence–based Grammar Error Corrector, expand their clinical trial management software, accelerate sales to the United States, and create six new jobs
• A Couple of Squares, located in London, Ont., will purchase equipment to automate the production process and expand to e-commerce platforms
• Scribendi, located in Chatham, Ont., will incorporate artificial intelligence into its platform, expand exports to the European Union, United States, and United Kingdom, and create two new jobs
• DOZR, located in Kitchener, Ont., will use artificial intelligence to build an equipment management portal, and create five new jobs
• Reko International Group, located in Windsor, Ont., will create a new robotic automation system that will help the company increase its market globally

Related Articles on LiisBeth

https://www.liisbeth.com/2015/10/04/social-enterprise-in-ontario-substance-or-style/

https://www.liisbeth.com/2018/10/19/minister-mary-ng-to-announce-a-new-20m-women-entrepreneurs-fund-today/

The post Federal Government Announces $3.6 Million Investment in Women-Led Social Enterprises in Ontario appeared first on LiisBeth.

Leaders of entrepreneurship support organizations talk an encouraging game about diversity, inclusion, and gender equality. Accelerators, incubators, investor groups, and even policymakers seem passionate about “equity over everything,” saying that it’s “good for the economy” and “simply the right thing to do.”

For women (and I use the word “women” with intersectionality and gender-queer/trans inclusivity in mind), it seems that the sea change we have been advocating for has finally arrived.

But, while formal talk on the outside suggests enlightenment, the hard truth is that the informal talk—and ergo experience—on the inside still remains largely Neolithic. It is not uncommon for women entrepreneurs in mainstream co-ed programs to hear:

“No one here sees gender—just the merit of the opportunity!”

“Men can’t help it—we’re wired to think of women that way.”

“If we accommodated your request, we’d have to accommodate everyone’s.”

“We tried to find qualified women founders.…”

“Are you sure that actually happened?”

“Oh, sorry, did we forget to invite you to that meeting”

“You don’t want venture funding or an exit? We don’t do ‘lifestyle’ businesses here.”

And my personal fave: “It was just a joke.”

The double speak is confusing—and deeply concerning. We are sold an inclusive nirvana at the door, but experience the thousands-year-old patriarchy on the inside.

On the one hand, it is widely acknowledged that women entrepreneurs matter to the tune of $150 billion in untapped economic potential. If we could only find time to address systemic barriers.

On the other hand, women entrepreneurs continue to be told we still don’t really belong. We are too difficult. Bitchy. Soft. Or our venture ideas are not innovative enough.

If we dare complain about unfair practices, give personal examples of discrimination, or try to explain how the program doesn’t work for us, we are told that our opinions are simply that—unsupported by the evidence (“Look at our mission statement again!”). They imply we are being too sensitive and downright destructive (“Hey, we’re a team here!”).

If we think this is new, think again. Simone de Beauvoir wrote 100 years ago when she presented her ideas to male colleagues, notably her collaborator and lover Jean-Paul Sartre. “I struggled with him (Sartre) for three hours. I had to admit I was beaten: I had realized, in the course of our discussion, that many of my opinions were based only on prejudice, bad faith or thoughtlessness, that my reasoning was shaky and my ideas confused.” She concluded by saying she was no longer sure what she thought “or even if I think at all.” She noted that she was “completely thrown.”

Simone de Beauvoir was one of the leading intellects of her generation—and no shrinking flower. There is a word for what she was experiencing. It’s called gaslighting.  Women entrepreneurs are experiencing the same phenomenon—and it’s seriously sabotaging economic growth and human potential.

Gaslighting 101

The term “gaslighting” stems from a 1938 stage play (and a 1940 movie of that name) about a husband who tries to convince his wife that she is crazy by repeatedly flickering the gas lights and, when she notices, denies the light is flickering at all. Psychologists use the term to describe tactics that are used repeatedly, in commonplace ways, to undermine a person or entire group’s perception of reality by denying facts, their experience, the true nature of the environment around them, and their feelings, until the target begins to question their own sense of reality and wonders, “Am I the problem?” The manipulative technique is effective in personal, group, and even whole society levels (think Trump).

How Gaslighting Kills Potential

From my work in the Ontario startup and innovation space, I meet hundreds of fully formed, self-aware, talented, growth-minded women entrepreneurs of all ages. Before deciding to pursue entrepreneurship—often to escape sexism in the workplace or low paying jobs—these women were successful students, had fruitful careers (while often caretaking for the family), and they did their homework. They have strong opinions, identified market gaps, defined goals. They know who they are and what they are capable of. They can stretch a dollar as far as the moon.

That’s how they arrive: eager and looking to benefit from the heavily advertised supports for entrepreneurs.

Then, after engaging with acclaimed mainstream innovation centres and founder programs, they begin second-guessing their business idea, even questioning what they want and who they are. The curriculum and culture alienates rather than motivates. Minified, they feel fruitful rage one day and trustingly surrender the next. Some eventually rein in their ambition, scale back their dreams, or get a job. Others are so discontented by overarching masculine cultures and support structures geared to prioritize STEM innovation and promote venture capital deal flow at the expense of all else that they decide they are better off finding their own way and aligned kinsfolk out in the grassroots level economic wilds where sadly access to capital, talent, and power networks can be even more difficult to tap. Fueled by Orphan Black style hopepunk and female empowerment books, most fearlessly persist but remain energetically plagued by self doubt. “I didn’t fit. I’m the problem. Not the system.”

That’s how a target of gaslighting thinks and talks. Was the diminishment intentional? Given the economic imperative, does that even matter?

Gaslighting experts say that what’s important is to first, recognize the problem. And second, to go after the facts.

Gender Talk, Without the Walk

Studies comparing women to men in the innovation and entrepreneurship space are abundant and continue to show that women remain systemically under-capitalized, under-represented, and under-supported in startup ecosystems across North America.

Curiously, researchers rarely look at the flip side of that coin: how the ecosystem (not just individuals) is performing (or failing) when it comes to supporting diversity, inclusion, and gender equity.

When ecosystem level study does emerge, it’s worth noting.

A new report titled “Strengthening Ecosystem Supports for Women Entrepreneurs” was released on June 13. It took a deep dive into Ontario’s innovation ecosystem and found troubling results. As part of the Ontario Inclusive Innovation Action Strategy (dubbed i2), researchers at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management and Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute surveyed 117 groups (universities, incubators, accelerators, business support organizations, boards of trade, and small business advisory groups) and found that support beyond rhetoric was sadly lacking.

• Only 44% of the 117 small business support organizations surveyed even consider gender and diversity in recruiting or selecting clients.
• Of those that consider gender and diversity in their programming, only a handful provided evidence of substantive programs.
• The definition or criteria for what qualifies as a supportable entrepreneurial idea continues to skew towards STEM and ideas that have the potential to renew or remake male-led sectors. A good example: an analysis of the Ontario Research Fund, which is mandated to promote research excellence in areas of strategic value to Ontario, showed that 88% of the money 2006-2015 went to men largely because what is considered most valuable is research in STEM-based areas.
• More than 68% of startup incubators do not provide gender equity, diversity, and inclusion training for staff or their founder clients.
• Almost none of those surveyed had meaningful wrap-around supports for women, particularly those facing barriers, such as child care.
• Women only account for 29% of Ontario’s startup incubator board positions.
• Only 3.4% of incubators make accommodations for specific demographic groups.
• Only 117 (20%) of the 686 incubators and support organizations in Ontario took the time and initiative to participate in the study, an indication of the lack of importance they really place on this issue or their reluctance to report.
• And, perhaps the most telling of all, most Ontario business support organizations, whether public or private, do not collect gender or other intersectional data to inform program design or evaluation.

A prime example of an organization that does not take gender issues in innovation seriously is the Ontario Centre of Excellence (OCE) network, the 30-year-old crown jewel in Ontario’s innovation ecosystem with 19 innovation centres across the province and, until its budget was recently cut, had a $277 million dollar annual operating budget. That publicly funded organization neglected to systematically collect gender and diversity data and failed to publicly report how many women-owned firms benefited from its $514 million in startup investments, let alone $1.7 billion in follow-on investments. A 60-page independent Deloitte study in September 2018, which aimed to prove the organization’s performance as a valuable economic engine, included no single statistic, mention or metric that relates to how well the organization served women or diverse entrepreneurs.

Insiders at OCE say that while its organization has worked successfully to improve workplace diversity within its own operations over the past several years, there has been no emphasis on a gender lens–based program assessment. Those who have tried to champion it say it was a lonely ride, and that interest only perked up once the federal Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) funding ($2B) announcements came out.

OCE’s manager of media relations, Andrew Robertson, says gender-specific data was collected for two of its 30+ programs and streams over the years. Under the SmartStart Seed Fund, 45% of fund recipients had at least one woman on the executive team. And over two-thirds of the Ontario Social Impact Vouchers (OSIV) were women-led. However, these statistics were not considered important enough to be included in their annual report.

At present, the SmartStart program is still technically active but closed for applications. The OSIV fund is no longer active.

When OCE’s budget was unfortunately slashed, no wonder Ontario’s approximately 450,000+ women entrepreneurs, on hearing the news, understandably heaved a big “meh.”

When looking at the broader context, it is useful to note that major incubator and accelerator ratings systems like UBI Global, a Stockholm-based research and advisory firm (with only two female board members out of 10) that rates and ranks over 700 university incubators, has 2020 KPIs that do not include diversity or gender metrics.

Is That Light Flickering? Yes, It Is—but Why?

Dr. Barbara Orser, Telfer professor and project leader of “Strengthening Ecosystem Supports for Women Entrepreneurs” (dubbed the i2 report), says that a few organizations are doing terrific, leading edge work. However, on the whole, creating inclusive support services for women entrepreneurs within mainstream innovation and entrepreneurship organizations has a long way to go. Institutional barriers to women’s enterprise growth are still not taken seriously—and it’s an important explanation for the lack of progress. Many leaders also assume that all are welcomed or that all feel welcomed, but this is not enough.

Orser adds that research shows that startup leaders tend to self-appoint themselves experts, over relying on instinct, personal experience, and DIY approaches. They significantly undervalue the expertise required to develop programs to address systemic gender issues required to make real change. You can spot that DIY guy out on the field and on stages, citing his qualifications, commitment, and experience as, “I have two daughters and a wife.”

Ironically, the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy fund may have, as an unintended consequence, actually amplified the gaslighting problem. Suddenly, with that grant money available, entrepreneur support organizations of all kinds self-declared themselves as experts on gender and on designing programs supporting women and diverse groups, even though they had no prior track record, evidence of expertise, or success in helping women’s businesses succeed.

Giving money to such organizations will simply perpetuate the massive gender gaps in entrepreneurship.

We need to find real ways to grow women-led businesses in ways that truly work for women, according to Heather Gamble, founder and CEO of Women on the Move, a women entrepreneur growth accelerator. “We [Canada] have a f*cked up definition of innovation,” says Gamble. “There’s such a heavy reliance on technology, such a narrow view across the board.”

For the kind of change we need, Gamble points to the New Zealand prime minister’s recent pledge to elevate the importance of well-being in that country. “Considering how entrepreneurial people are in New Zealand and given that many women entrepreneurs are in the well-being and caregiving space, that will likely translate into more support for women entrepreneurs in those sectors,” says Gamble.  “So how do we expand the definition of innovation and elevate innovation spend in areas such as well-being in this country?”

Dr. Wendy Cukier, project co-leader for the i2 report, believes manifesting real and meaningful change requires a multi-level ecological, coordinated approach and a lot more accountability. “We need deep, systems-level change and a multi-layer strategy because the barriers women [and people with intersecting barriers] face are, themselves, multi-level. We have stereotypes, values, and beliefs that shape expectations, eligibility criteria that skews which ideas get funded, and who gets counted as an entrepreneur and who doesn’t. All these challenges have to be addressed because they, in turn, inform what intermediary organizations do.”

How Do We Turn Up All the Lights?

The report recommends that we need to build equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) assessment criteria into all future funding requests, establish funding to help small organizations access EDI training, and mandate innovation centres to support all types of innovation (process, organizational, marketing, and across all sectors) and not just product innovation in tech sectors. The researchers would also like to see more collaboration between mainstream and women-focused support organizations and increased expert support for women-led scale-ups.

Cukier agrees with Orser that, ultimately, the Ontario government needs to put more pressure on small business support organizations to take diversity and inclusion issues seriously. Translation: no strategy, no gathering of data, no holding leadership accountable, no public funding.

How Do We Stop the Gaslighting?

While most agree the i2 report contained no real surprises regarding the true state of support for women and diverse entrepreneurs in Ontario, industry leaders and other participants at its reveal were enthusiastic about its potential to inspire a new round of activism, perhaps leading to real change.

Orser urged woman entrepreneurs in an incubator or accelerator program to share the report with program managers and incubator leaders—and ask them to formally respond. “You can organize an in-house discussion group to create space for reflection of your organization’s performance. Use the links to resources provided and help educate the management team. From there, look at the gender nature of the initiatives and think how every service or program can advance D&I and gender equity in the program—and beyond.”

Cukier added that we are “in a special moment, a window of time that has opened” in terms of support for the advancement of women entrepreneurs in this country. But it can always flicker again. So, we cannot afford to squander the moment.

The Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada (WEOC) is an association of women’s enterprise centres working to advance women-led ventures for over 20 years—and they have the research statistics to prove it.

Sandra Altner, chair of the WEOC board for the past eight years, says that with $2.6 million in new funding from WES, the organization can now offer greater support, knowledge sharing, development of partnerships/collaborations, as well as help co-develop more effective mechanisms to support diverse entrepreneurs in Ontario and across Canada.

Based on the i2 research findings, this news could not come at a better time. If well-fuelled support organizations like MaRS, OCE, and Communitech can’t move the dial, perhaps a WES fund–strengthened coalition of Ontario’s previously ghettoized women’s support networks will do the job—and do it right this time.

It comes down to this: If we want to realize the economic growth that women entrepreneurs are capable of generating, we need to stop gaslighting women entrepreneurs and cultivate an enterprise support system that delivers on the inside what it talks about on the outside.

How to Help Stop Gaslighting in Entrepreneurship Ecosystems?

For starters, you can download, read, and share the report, video, and Livestream presentations with your colleagues, local policymakers, or incubator management team. Advisory boards might want to use the assessment criteria to evaluate their own organization’s practices. You can also suggest your program adopt the DAT (Diversity Assessment Tool) and G-EET (Gender-Smart Entrepreneurship Education & Training) frameworks in your organizational practices.

To help you share the report, and encourage your organization to consider the recommendations, here are several direct links:

Download the report:
Strengthening Ecosystem Supports for Women Entrepreneurs: Ontario Inclusive Innovation (i2) Action Strategy

Watch the recorded keynotes and panel sessions of the report launch:
Facebook: Part 1 (Keynote) | Part 2 (Panel #1) | Part 3 (Panel #2)
Twitter: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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Related articles:

https://www.liisbeth.com/2019/04/26/where-are-the-women-in-canadas-women-in-tech-venture-fund/

https://www.liisbeth.com/2018/12/03/feds-drop-9-million-into-womens-entrepreneurship/

The post Gaslighting: The Silent Killer of Women’s Startups appeared first on LiisBeth.

Our foray into Oregon’s newly legalized recreational cannabis industry earned us a spot on the cover of the local newspaper for two weeks running – though not in a good way. The headlines described us as facing “complications,” but the content quoted angry locals as saying we were bent on manufacturing and selling drugs across the street from a family-friendly park filled with kids.

This publicity followed on the heels of a town hall meeting to obtain a state-mandated Conditional Use Permit from the local municipality. The permit was the State’s way of ensuring that local governments were informed of any cannabis businesses opening in their jurisdiction and also enabled those municipalities to take a cut of the development money. Our town, like most in Oregon, took a big cut.

Several new facilities had already petitioned for permits, but ours threatened to be the “one too many.” Like many small towns, the public felt overwhelmed by the influx of new people and distrustful of the new recreational cannabis industry as a whole. The meeting drew a packed house with an organized group of protestors testifying against us, shaking their fists and yelling that we would ‘have dope fiends hanging off the fences’ of our property.

My husband and I, the cofounders of Full Circle CO2, kept our cool, agreed to all the City’s stipulations, and left with our approval.

But our buildout also became something of a circus. There were, at times, up to six people parked on lawn chairs across the street watching – and often hurling ugly comments — as we pulled out 400 feet of old, crumbling sidewalk; poured new, handicapped accessible curbs; and installed an eight-foot landscaped greenway on all public-facing sides of the property as well as cedar fencing (mandated by the city to replace the old chain link). There were several incidents of angry locals not just yelling at us but throwing rocks. The worst of the vitriol was directed at me – the female cofounder in our start-up cannabis enterprise. Since I was the one who spoke at the meeting in this conservative logging town, I got nailed. Trolls in online forums, coffeeshop gossip mongers, and people on local radio call in shows dismissed my cofounder and husband, Paul, as “a pretty boy” and went after me as a “domineering b*tch” that didn’t know my place. That a cannabis company had moved into their town was tough enough to swallow; the front person being a woman just ratcheted up the hysteria.

We kept our heads down and focused on putting the fence up.

It was an episode that was emblematic of my experience as a woman in the cannabis industry. Sometimes you have to keep your head down and focus on the task at hand, and sometimes you have to step into the center ring and advocate for yourself. The trick for me has been to remain true to the vision and mission of our business and not allow anyone else to define who I am or what role I should be allowed to play in this male-dominated business.

This is the story of that journey, but, first a bit of background.

CANNABIS GOES CANNABIZ

In 2014, Oregon became the third state in the U.S. to legalize cannabis for recreational use by adults. It would take three years for the industry to transition from the past two decades of loose oversight under the medical program to a functioning recreational market. In that time, thousands of businesses would start and fail, many even before receiving their licenses. Today, only a small percentage of the hundreds of initial applicants are still in business, even fewer with their original owners. Those that did survive have largely done so because of huge amounts of investment money that allowed them to ride out those turbulent early days of legislation, rulemaking, black market leaks, and oversupply. Today, only a handful of the small-scale, Oregonian-owned, self-funded operations that dominated the medical market remain.

My husband and I own one of those companies, Full Circle CO2. We are a two-person, self-made cannabis processing facility that stands out as much for our 50 percent female ownership and unique business model as we do for our hand-crafted products. This year, for the first time, we will see steady revenue, enough to cover both our business and home expenses, though I still supplement our income with writing. It’s been a long road filled with construction, research, networking, policy advocacy, and out-of-the-box business development. But we’re still here, and we’ve learned a lot that can help other small businesses thrive, especially those in highly regulated markets such as cannabis and alcohol, even in the midst of big-money competition.

Our journey — and that of any early-to-the-game cannabis company — can be divided into three phases: pre-legalization/medical, licensing, and early market. I call our current phase “early market” because like most new industries, regulations and consumer preferences change quickly in the early years, preventing the stabilization of industry practices and norms. How long that kind of volatility will take to even out is anyone’s guess; in the cannabis space, we expect the unexpected as long as national and international laws continue to evolve.

FIND THE MARKET NICHE

My husband, a construction contractor and long-time believer in the healing effects of cannabis, entered the industry in the waning years of medical, before we married. He was in his early thirties and started with a small-scale grow operation in an outbuilding on his residential property, with just enough space to provide flower (the bud) to a few patients.

Pretty immediately two things became clear: He wasn’t very good at growing cannabis, but he saw high demand in value-added products such as vape pens, tinctures, topicals, and edibles. As well, nicotine-based vaping products were growing in popularity. That drove him to research the manufacturing of cannabis-based vape oils, a difficult project after nearly a hundred years of research suppression. He persisted though, and, in 2015, he settled on using CO2 for extraction, which is a non-toxic, non-explosive method of extracting the essential oil (which includes the THC, cannabinoids, and terpenes) from the cannabis plant. It’s a method widely used in the production of essential oils from plants such as lavender and roses.

But entry into the cannabis industry via processing appeared cost-prohibitive, especially for lower-middle class Americans, which we were. At that time, a mid-sized, no-frills extractor ran to $250,000 or more and the ancillary equipment commonly used for post-processing and refinement could cost another $100,000 to $300,000 (all figures in US dollars). We scraped together financing for the extractor and bare necessities with small personal loans, savings, and credit cards. And then Paul started down the long road of learning how to make cannabis extract while I learned everything I could about operating a small business.

The first thing that hit me was pretty obvious: Nearly everyone in cannabis was male, and it had been that way as long as anyone could remember. In pre-medical, black-market days, women were customers (often in need of a male escort who could vouch for them) and arm candy relegated to wait on a couch while stoner dudes talked breeds, trichomes, and pricing. Under medical, it wasn’t much better. Since mostly men had been growing, mostly men continued to run cultivation, distribution and management. If women gained entry to the sector at all, it was usually filling roles as low-paid trimmers or clerks in the newly-allowed dispensaries.

REGULATION TAMES THE WILD WEST

Our marriage in 2016 coincided with the dawn of the recreational market and a promise of change. The State of Oregon began issuing administrative rules, making it clear that the recreational market, in stark contrast to the medical days, was going to be highly regimented. The old way of doing things would not cut it. Opportunities opened for people with skills in mainstream agriculture, manufacturing, retail, and distribution. Like myself, a lot of women made the transition, applying their diverse life and work experiences to the cannabis industry.

I brought an advanced degree in geology, five years of experience in environmental consulting and community college instruction, as well as hefty student loans to the sector. Remarkably, that set me up well to sift through the weeds, as it were. While Paul focused on the extraction side, my role touched every aspect of the start-up — reading up on the administrative rules and keeping us in compliance, overseeing the application process, setting the timeline for construction, and managing the budget. Most in the industry paid thousands to attorneys to read and interpret the hundreds of pages of guidance documents and legislation the state was pumping out, while I read and reread every page. When I had any questions, I never hesitated to pick up the phone and call a regulatory agency or policy maker directly. Apparently, this is infrequent in an industry still wary of government officials. For us, this initiative was essential. And it’s something I recommend any business owner make a habit of doing, whether for occupational health and safety, weights and measures, or simple building code compliance. The best information always comes directly from the source, and I found regulators are often are surprisingly eager to help.

One of the state’s first regulations was a restriction on operations in residentially zoned properties. That left most of the industry, including us, without a place to operate, even for research and development. The scramble for agricultural, commercial or industrial space created a land race. Within months, the inventory of cannabis-appropriate properties (the guidelines stipulated distance from schools and lot size) dwindled to almost nothing. Pricing — for purchase or lease — responded to the demand, increasing to twice or three times the asking price of just a year earlier. Worse, even those companies lucky enough to secure a property before prices soared often found themselves back in the search after counties and cities held special elections to opt out of cannabis.

We were lucky. Just eight months into our search, we found a lot to lease in a small town 30 minutes from our house. It had a roof and reasonable rent and that was about it. Then we had to endure the hell fire of obtaining our permit to build. And then there was the tall task of fulfilling the requirements of the permit, which dictated everything from storage (we would need a secure vault) to surveillance (our 25 by 30-foot structure has seven cameras that record 24/7), to the prep counter material (food grade). It was like building a mini casino.

DIY ON THE FLY

Most of the industry solved this particular logistical nightmare by throwing money at it. The average processing facility build-out at that time cost between $500,000 and $2 million. For us, frugality became the mother of invention — and one of the reasons that we survived this roller coaster industry. From the beginning, we drew on our own skill sets and invested our own sweat in the build out. My husband’s contractor license enabled us to handle most of the construction. As a registered geologist and with my experience as a researcher, I was able to write our complex Standard Operating Procedures, safety plans, and training manual myself. When we required outside expertise for landscaping and irrigation, plumbing or website design, we reached out to people in our network, finding friends and contacts willing to work for labor in kind or low fees.

We also hunted out bargains. From my time in research, I knew labs paid a premium for equipment so I sourced kitchen, farm and alternative industry suppliers for devices that could collect, contain, measure, and disperse liquids — and we bought everything we could secondhand. We found office furniture at salvage stores, and we pulled heavy steel storage cages and security gates out of autobody shops to make our vault. One day, we emptied out most of a recently closed restaurant, scoring stainless-steel tables, cleaning products, mop buckets and even a picnic table to give us a place to eat lunch — all for less than $500. After being quoted upwards of $13,000 for a security system for our tiny space, we took the regulations into a big box store and made friends with a clerk willing to read them. We left with $250 of equipment that kept us in compliance until we could upgrade to something more robust. We still use vintage sterilized mason jars we pulled out of a farmhouse canning room to store and transport our bulk product.

Finally, in January 2017, we became one of the first of 40 licensed processors in Oregon. After we paid $5,000 for the license fee, we had maxed out every credit card we had and were left with just $7 to our names. But we had done it! We had built a processing facility, and we were shipping stock.

WOMEN: MIND THE WELCOME MAT PULL BACK

By then, the media had picked up on the uptick of women in the industry, a welcome shift from the b*tches and buds’ mentality that had dominated the cannabis market for so long. While our numbers still lagged far behind men, there were more women in the industry, and those women were holding greater positions of authority. Women-owned dispensaries and wholesale facilities were becoming common, as were woman-dominated farming collectives. There were even Facebook groups for women in the industry, and woman-only cannabis business groups.

But that pink-in-the-green uptick didn’t last long.

In the fall of 2017, Oregon cannabis farmers harvested more than a million pounds of cannabis, far more than enough to supply the state. As regulations still don’t allow for export, the bottom dropped out of the local market. Prices plunged, farms failed and guess what? The good old boy network kicked back in. Competition became cutthroat with men infiltrating women-only spaces — online and in meetings — drowning out our voices and preventing us from networking. Next, they shut women and their products and services out of the game by excluding them from consideration and shelf space. Finally, they targeted our less established and therefore more vulnerable businesses for takeover in an ongoing consolidation process. Now, some dispensary owners estimate that nearly 80 percent of the value-added products on the shelves are held by just three parent companies.

STAY SMALL TO SURVIVE

We survived that first market collapse mostly because we were so small that no one saw us as competition. And our frugal build-out and lack of employees meant we had comparatively little overhead. We only needed a sliver of the pie to stay alive. Competitors tried to undercut our prices, and I faced several instances of blatant condescension and inappropriate sexualized comments, to the point that I started bowing out of “first-contact” business meetings. Instead, Paul began handling initial contacts to vet the value system of potential clients and partners — and shield me from potential negative behaviors and attitudes. It’s a policy we still follow today.

As with the build-out, we took a contrarian approach to other businesses fighting to establish their brands in a crowded market. Instead of promoting our own brand, we built a business model based on servicing the industry. So instead of investing money to launch a Full Circle line of products, we offer business-to-business services, providing custom processing and value-added products for a toll fee. We turned potential competitors into clients, and that helped us maintain a degree of independence and ride out market fluctuations. The strategy also insulated us from high-cost regulatory changes in labeling and testing, shifts that shuttered many start-ups.

But we don’t shy away from taking an active role in advocacy and policy making, both in the state and nationally, partly out of necessity. In the summer of 2018, with no notice or explanation, the state issued a verbal “cease and desist” order for our business. After all our effort to start up, we faced being shut down – and there appeared no means for appeal or reinstatement. I took to the phones, calling everyone from the small-business ombudsman at the Secretary of State’s office to the governor’s cannabis liaison to our federal senator. I often got through as we had taken the time to build relationships with all these people during the previous three years. We showed up for town halls, provided public comments on proposed rules, and lobbied directly. That all helped. As did going out of our way to become a part of the community that initially slammed us, by participating in arts events, spending money at locally owned businesses and being good neighbors.

TURN YOUR ENEMIES INTO FRIENDS

Ironically, it ended up being our good standing in our small town that made the difference. After a two-week shutdown, the local fire marshal went to bat for us. We knew him by first name, and he was already familiar with us, our business and how we operate. He wrote a strongly worded letter, which was backed up by the ombudsman, and we got our permission to operate. The Secretary of State’s office even informed us that we could lodge a formal grievance over the shutdown, but I declined; instead, I requested to be placed on the rules-making committee so I could prevent this from happening to others. They did. I was the only female processor in the room.

Running our business has gotten a little easier since those hurly burly start-up days. We have regular clients and our products, under their brand names, are sold in nearly every dispensary in the state. We still process, pack, and label everything ourselves, but we like the freedom that comes with that. There are still challenges, not the least of which is navigating the gray area that still exists between state legalization and federal prohibition. Because banks are federally insured and our business is not legally recognized federally, we can’t get business loans or a line of credit, which limits our ability to obtain credit and puts our current banking accounts at risk of closure.

And yet, we abide. This summer, we will launch a line of Chong’s Choice. The contract to process products for Tommy Chong (a cannabis activist who made his name in Cheech and Chong comedies) came to us via word of mouth, great references from our clients, and my husband’s determination to stick with his unique brand of craft CO2 oil. It will provide, we hope, the first stable source of income we’ve had in years.

But there is still a long road ahead of us to reach financial stability, and an uphill battle for women in the industry. I’m still almost always the only woman in the room. Most of the women in this industry still seem to work on the retail side, though there are some family and women-led farms that are surviving. And even though women control two-thirds of the purchasing power in the U.S. and so should be a primary target demographic, cannabis marketing still focuses on young men.

I remain hopeful. I look forward to the day that, for a change, women farmers and business owners dominate policy discussions and our products dominate the shelves. My current goal is to build a business that is sustainable over time and generates revenue and creates jobs in the same community that was so against us at the outset.  For myself personally, I’d like to see Full Circle provide Paul and I a stable income and a means of taking care of my parents as they age and ourselves into retirement.

And I’d like to pay off my student loans, a goal I almost gave up on but now seems within reach.

The post Taking the High Road to Success appeared first on LiisBeth.

A year ago, the Canadian federal government and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) set out to level the playing field for women in tech by increasing the amount set aside for its Women in Technology (WIT) Venture Fund from approximately $100M to $200 million in 2018.

In Canada, studies show only 4 to 7% of all venture capital goes to women majority–owned or women-led tech startups. In the US, the situation is even worse according to a 2018 Tech Crunch study that found only 2.2% of venture capital investment in tech firms went to US-based female-founded startups, a decline from previous years.

Not surprisingly, many placed high hopes on the increased investment in the WIT venture fund to fuel change. Announcement of the fund’s increase came in 2018, in what the government touted as Canada’s first-ever feminist budget, which included a $2 billion investment in women entrepreneurs over the next five years.

A Year Later, What’s Changed?

In an announcement released this April, BDC reported that $17 million (8.5% of the $200 million) has been invested in a total of 25 companies. More than 1000 enterprises inquired about the fund or were encouraged by one of BDC’s 34+ fund managers to consider applying.

One recipient was Innerspace, a company that says it is closing in on an “important problem,” that is helping Google track you once you are inside of a building. At present, you disappear from “under his eye” once you go indoors. According to Innerspace, companies can benefit by keeping their employees under surveillance, minute by minute, to identify efficient use of space. The government clearly agrees and invested $3.5 million in the company, even though its founders are all male. No, wait, on closer surveillance, LiisBeth discovered that Innerspace employs a woman as their chief marketing officer!

When news of the investment came out, sources familiar with the firm quickly expressed outrage on social media. How could BDC use the WIT fund to invest in yet another all-male-founded shop? Is the fund a sham? Does adding one woman to their leadership team truly qualify Innerspace as the type of company politicians had in mind when they created this fund?

More importantly, has the WIT fund changed anything?

In mid-April, The Logic, a snappy new $300/year subscriber only indie news source reported that, despite years of efforts to advance women in tech, 90 percent of Canadian investment deals still go to companies founded exclusively by men. The Logic also wrote that BDC made 47 investments in women-led tech firms from 2014-2018 under the WIT initiative. Those investments represent only 15.8 percent of its total venture portfolio, which translates little change. Or progress that is measured in inches, not yards.

Turns out, social change is hard to scale.

Look! There’s a Woman!

Talks with several BDC officials confirmed that the WIT venture fund eligibility criteria require that companies have at least one woman in an executive leadership role. Shawn Salewski, director of external communications at BDC, says a leadership role in the context of this fund means “an executive on the leadership team driving the direction of the business.” Salewski adds that the fund also considers the length of service of that female exec. “You can’t come in with no women on the team one day and a woman on the next and expect us to invest,” he said. “We won’t. They need to be in the role for at least a year.”

Research shows that half of all tech startups do not have a female executive at all, and only five percent have a female CEO. So, on the surface, a “one-is-better-than-none” rule seems like a good point of intervention. We can be persuaded that limiting access to the WIT fund to firms that are 51 per cent majority owned by women may be impractical in the venture space where founders, of any gender, typically sell more than 50 per cent of ownership in their company in exchange for venture capital raised.

But Where Did the Money Go?

To verify if WIT funds have been invested in ways that at least put more women in tech, LiisBeth reviewed 16 companies listed on the BDC WIT website that received WIT investment this past year plus those recently announced (total of 20). We reviewed company websites, Crunchbase data, other business databases, plus conducted Google searches for media related to the company in the past few years. We looked at the leadership team to see if it included at least one woman. Lendified aside, it turns out that BDC did reward companies that had at least one woman in leadership.

Then we looked for a deeper commitment to gender equity by checking out the gender composition of staff, advisory boards or fiduciary boards, and whether a company’s website art and copy was gender inclusive. We recognize that it’s possible a company’s website or online data is out of date. However, we think that if a team were chasing WIT venture capital, it would ensure their online image was in sync with their pitch.

We summarized our results in the chart below. We awarded three boobs as a “hooray-good job” to companies we felt went beyond the “one woman” benchmark , and two to those we felt just met just this basic criteria. Companies that left us scratching our heads received one boob. Lastly, we gave a plain old “WTF” to those that did not seem to reach even the basic criteria, which is to have at least one woman somewhere on your VIP list on Crunchbase, a PR release, or your “Our Leadership Team” page on your website, even if it is in a traditional female role (i.e., human resources, communications, marketing).

Overall, 16 of the 20 companies had at least one named woman co-founder recognized on their site. Eighteen had a woman in an executive role. That’s the good news. Only three of the companies had all women co-founders, originally. Thirteen of the 20 companies appeared to be committed to gender equity beyond just the leadership team. One company, Nestready had a woman co-founder and woman in a leadership role at one point, but no longer does. BDC says it did not participate in it’s latest funding round as a result.

We awarded three of the companies an “earth” star for creating products that potentially benefit society. The rest are either basically helping you spend money more easily, finding ways to put more tech between you and other humans, or helping companies become more efficient through automation.

To be clear, we’re not opposed to efficiencies or automation. Stronger bottom lines can be a great thing—if that results in companies that pay living wages to gig economy contractors, support local communities, and provide real full-time jobs (in Canada) with benefits for employees, for at least a year or two after implementation. Given this is public money being invested, we would hope BDC pays attention to founder values and intentions post exit.

And one more observation: None of the 20 enterprises that received funding produce products or services that specifically work to advance women and girls in society.

To Wit, What’s Next for WIT?

The WIT fund is the first fund of its kind in the world, according to Michelle Scarborough, the Managing Director, Strategic Investments. She says investments will continue to flow. “We have a very full pipeline.”

Adds Scarborough: “Our due diligence process is in line with best practices in the fund management game. We look for category leaders, whether they have an unfair advantage, own their intellectual property, and have the potential to disrupt and grow fast-globally. Our approach is pretty traditional.”

And that’s where our real concern lies. If Silicon Valley venture dogma and “best practices” entrenched a gender bias in tech in the first place, perpetuating it certainly isn’t going to get us out.

If WIT’s goal is truly to produce gender equality in tech, it must take a different approach, to change the underlying system.  Whether it’s getting more women into politics, onto boards, into manufacturing/construction/mining (insert any under represented sector), the strategy of enticing a few women onto the field and expect them to win at a game that is not built for them, even has rules stacked against them, will result in limited, if any real change. Most of them will disengage and start their own business in a sector that is far less hostile to people born with two X chromosomes—versus one. Nestready is an example of a “now you see them, now you don’t” outcome.

What is required for true systems change is a reinvention of the game. If we truly want to see women in tech thrive, we would be better off building a WIT fund built by women, for women, from the ground up.

Jonathan Hera, managing partner at Marigold Capital and expert in gender-lens investing, says BDC’s intention may be good, but sticking to traditional selection criteria is an example of impotence in action. “BDC has the opportunity to re-write the entire rule book when it comes to unleashing the power of women in tech. They could change what success and outcomes look like – long-term economic impact that supports female founders, the products and services they offer, and the underrepresented and marginalized communities they more often serve. To do this would mean altering the basis on which BDC makes decisions, and of course why they do so. Like most of us in the venture space, BDC’s investment processes have deeply embedded implicit and unconscious systems bias, and unless they change the criteria, their success won’t likely meet its intent and opportunity.”

A Solution?

Radicals would say, start over. Segregate the WIT fund entirely. Give it a clean slate. Bring in a group of smart women to redesign the fund from the bottom up. Recruit a kick-ass collective of women in tech to govern the fund. And see where it takes us. For those who think enabling a group of women in tech to manage the fund as a collective is a risky idea, we say two things:

First, our government invests and grants billions of dollars in risky future forward ideas every year to drive economic growth and social change. See #supercluster. $200M is a drop in the bucket.

Second, collectives of men have been running venture capital for years.

At the very least, WIT should strengthen its criteria. It should require evidence of a commitment to gender justice throughout the company — not just at the executive level. Evaluations could require a minimum of 50 percent women on advisory boards, 50 percent women on staff, ideally many in non-traditional roles, as well as a review of marketing materials to assess gender inclusive messaging and evidence of policy that aims to procure at least 10 percent of its supplies and services spend from women-owned firms. It would be wise to add a requirement to complete third-party employee surveys that comment on whether or not the culture is, indeed, inclusive.

Better than all of this, BDC could focus the fund on tech companies that have products and services that advance gender justice in some way—or at the very least  develop products that addresses one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Given the state of the planet, we could use less investment in extractive and rent seeking “disruption” and more tech companies that focus on reclamation and harmony.

For anyone who moans that there is only one way to measure return on investment, or that stronger criteria slows things down, is too expensive, hard, or intrusive, just tell them to apply to the traditional venture capital funds or one of BDC’s non-women funds that comprise its whopping $33 billion portfolio. Again, the $200 million WIT venture fund is a drop in the bucket. So, let’s make that drop count. Public money investments need to push boundaries and lead the way. That is what governments are uniquely able to do: Think long term and drive needed change when entrenched patriarchal industries and quarterly review–driven mindsets clearly will not.

Surely, we are ready to move beyond, “OMG, they got a woman in the C suite! Tick!”

After all, real change is what most women voted for—and what many will vote for again in the fall.

Editors note:  BDC officials say Nest Ready was co-founded by a woman originally and had another woman on the executive team at the time of investment. However, the fact that her existance or contribution to the creation of the enterprise is non existant on any company sits or news releases speaks to what we would call erasure.  So we are keeping our rating of “WTF”.  It also points out that a firm can evolve back to an all male team after WIT investment. Correction: Lendified received a grant under the WIT fund–not a venture deal. 

Related Articles

Read May 2nd OP ED by The Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce founder, Nancy Wilson below. “How many women does it take to make a “women-led” company? It turns out you just need one – that is, if you are a tech company looking for investment from a venture fund marketed to support female entrepreneurship and participation in the tech sector.”

Op-Ed: What’s a ‘Women-Led’ Company? We Need a Standard Definition

https://www.liisbeth.com/2018/12/03/feds-drop-9-million-into-womens-entrepreneurship/

https://www.liisbeth.com/2016/06/21/confronting-gender-inequity-inclusion-innovation-space/

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The post Where are the Women in Canada’s Women in Tech Venture Fund? appeared first on LiisBeth.

The federal government has awarded Ryerson University $9 million over three years to fund a Women’s Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (WEKH) to advance research into women’s entrepreneurship with the goal of increasing participation of women in the economy.

Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion, who worked in the President’s Office at Ryerson University before becoming a Member of Parliament in the Liberal government, made the announcement this morning, saying WEKH will equip governments and the private sector “with the necessary information to better understand and assist women entrepreneurs in their efforts to start up, scale up and access new markets.”

Currently, only 16 percent of Canadian small and medium-sized businesses are women owned. By many estimates, advancing gender equality has the potential to add $150 billion to the Canadian economy by 2026. WEKH is expected to be a one-stop source of knowledge, data and best practices to help governments, organizations and the private sector develop better policies and strategies to grow women’s entrepreneurship.

Vicki Saunders, founder of SheEO and a partner in WEKH, hopes the investment will unleash the potential of women’s entrepreneurship. “We have an excellent business case in the women’s entrepreneurship area to show how investing in women will grow the Canadian economy. It’s very exciting to see that a university will take this information and upload research that will power better government policy.” She adds that “Ryerson has been a leading driver of entrepreneurship, innovation and education across the country.”

The Ryerson-led consortium was chosen over one competing bid led by University of Ottawa, which included some of Canada’s top thought leaders in the area of women’s entrepreneurship, notably Barbara Orser, a professor at University of Ottawa and co-author of Feminine Capital: Unlocking the Power of Women Entrepreneurs; Jennifer Jennings, Associate Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at University of Alberta’s School of Business; Sarah Kaplan, Director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto; Sandra Altner, CEO of the Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada; and the MaRS Institute, an innovation hub that helps entrepreneurs launch and grow ventures.

The Ryerson consortium includes eight regional hubs and universities, ten partners and 37 supporters.

The federal government has not lacked for reports making the case that supporting women’s entrepreneurship will strengthen the Canadian economy – more than 30 in the past 30 years, many industry sponsored. The central question now is will this direct federal government investment in university-led research produce relevant policy action and real results?

Says Barbara Orser, who coined the term Entrepreneurial Feminism, “It’s a unique opportunity to ensure a feminist and women-focussed perspective is shared and that only research of the highest quality is profiled. If not, there’s a risk of replicating the stereotypes and mythology of women’s entrepreneurship. Every incubator and accelerator and academic engaged in entrepreneurship should be speed dialled into this new source of information.”

Ryerson University’s Wendy Cukier, the Founder and Director of the Diversity Institute at the Ted Rogers School of Management, says they were thrilled to win the bid. “We don’t see this as an opportunity to do research. We see this as an opportunity to drive change, and the diversity institute has a strong track record in terms of using evidence and research to make things happen. We have pulled together a good network of partners including universities who will be able to grow and sustain (WEKH) beyond the initial funding.” She says that Ryerson will reach out to work with partners beyond the consortium. “The whole point is to aggregate research and information available. The whole point is to map and grow the entire ecosystem.”

Kelly Diels, a Vancouver-based feminist marketing consultant and writer, hopes there is a channel that loops the research hub back to women entrepreneurs so they can turn it into useful information with tools to use in their businesses. That way, “it’s not a report disappears into the ether or was a big project that didn’t actually move back to the people who need it.”

Jena Cameron, Manager of Women Entrepreneurship Policy at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, says both applications were very strong and equally evaluated against the assessment grid that included things such as partnerships and sustainability. A lot of information on women’s entrepreneurship already exists, says Cameron, so a big part of the plan is to “package information (it) in a way that it becomes accessible to women business support organizations and women entrepreneurs themselves. Go through it and distil nuggets down into practical things that the ecosystem can use.”

Our initial take at LiisBeth? What, another study? This data better lead to change. It will benefit women entrepreneurs if the Ryerson-led consortium reaches out to the other side to tap into Canada’s leading feminist enterprise research and thinkers. Create an open door policy that lets everyone in so everyone can win, including community-based women’s entrepreneurship organizations and feminist entrepreneurs who are often off the mainstream radar.

https://www.liisbeth.com/2018/10/17/how-to-unlock-billions-of-unrealized-growth-led-by-entrepreneurial-women/

https://www.liisbeth.com/2018/10/19/minister-mary-ng-to-announce-a-new-20m-women-entrepreneurs-fund-today/

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What if we could rank cities according to how desirable they were for women and gender minorities to live, work and play? And what if this equated with sustainable economic growth for all? If we could pinpoint and, hence, strengthen factors that would attract women and in particular, women entrepreneurs and investors, to move to a city, what might those factors be?  Consider:

• Safety in all areas of a city, during day and night.
• Refuge sites and high quality support for victums of gender violence. (or better yet, declining numbers)
• A thriving diverse women-led entrepreneurship ecosystem.
• Equal wages (Ontario has a 31% gap).
• Equal gender representation on corporate and non-profit boards as well as city council.
• Affordable and accessible daycare.
• Vibrant, inclusive mentor networks.
• A five block feminist and social justice centered enterprise district.
• A thriving feminist art, music, media and culture scene.
• Subway stations and main streets re-named after prominent women and gender minority leaders.
• Subsidized feminist summer and March break camp programs-for all genders.
• Plenty of green space for recharging and connecting root chakras with Mother Earth.
• Progressive attitudes towards women in all sectors including civic affairs, the legal system, and reproductive health.
• A self-identified feminist Mayor.
• (Add your idea here)

Sounds attractive? Welcome to The Feminist City.

Why The Feminist City?

We bet women (and their families) from around the world would flock to The Feminist City—to live, work, invest, and thrive. And we bet men would gain too. As would gender nonconforming folks and others from diverse backgrounds.

In addition, the economy would experience a much needed spark. There is a strong business case (jobs, tourism dollars, quality of life) behind the idea that The Feminist City would produce incredible economic development opportunities—cities could do themselves (and us) a big favour by trying to become one.

Progressive Politics Produce Economic Benefits

At the turn of this century, when cities were looking for a competitive edge or ways to save enfeebled economies, urban theorist Richard Florida, extending the brilliant work of urbanist Jane Jacobs,  seemed to provide the answer: Find ways to attract the “creative class” who were deemed to be the force capable of reviving rusting, industrial age economies. Creative-class infused cities would later become the economic heroes of the times. The Harvard Business Review hailed his book, The Rise of The Creative Class, as the major breakthrough idea of 2004.

Who comprised this creative class? The “super creative” ten per cent epicentre of this class or worker included scientists, engineers, university professors, poets, novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers, and architects”. (Note: All male-led fields). But essentially, the bulk of the creative class folk were primarily socially marginalized people considered to be dreamers, sketchy or undesirables in prior decades. Florida proposed that cities that invited diversity and were were more tolerant of outliers were and would continue to be, more economically resilient and successful. At that time, his indicators for tolerance was measured by how friendly a city was towards “unconventional people – gays, immigrants, artists, and ‘free-thinking bohemians’.”

Florida did not consider gender equity as part of his original creative class formula. In fact, he didn’t consider the health of the local feminist ecosystem as a key driver of economic success in subsequent updates of his theory—that is, until 2012.

Now, with gender inequality persisting and mother earth being pummelled to breaking point (Coincidentally? We think not!) Feminism has remerged from the deep like Godzilla (who is female by the way) to level the field and fight the dark blue scourge. Florida took notice and reflected this in his most recent work. As did others interested in saving economies gasping for air. Advancing women has suddenly become the neoliberal capitalist equivalent to trading bitcoins—perceived huge potential for outsized returns and fast.

Today, many national governments and multi-national corporations are betting that advancing equality for women and girls will fuel new economic growth. Consequently, more people than ever before in history are working to advance gender equity in all sectors. However, the idea that progressive pro-women urban development policy can attract high-growth, next-gen industries, new tourism dollars, and make our cities more livable/visitable for all genders is only just now starting to catch on at the municipal level.

Buh-bye Creative Class? Welcome The Feminist Class!

As evidence, progressive female urban planners are increasingly organizing and working together on about at how to make cities better for women and girls. Their tactics include getting more women involved in urban planning, shaping policies that advance gender justice, and designing more inclusive, safe public spaces. In step, progressive economic development officers are working on strategies to attract high-growth, women-led enterprises.  In other words, they are talking about criteria and strategies for creating a feminist city.

The media has also jumped on the idea by writing about what cities are best for women. In 2014, Bustle, a U.S. based feminist magazine, identified the eight best cities for women to live in in the United States. Editors considered factors like the gender wage gap, laws related to reproductive health, and the depth and “breadth of the city’s historical foundations of progressive feminism in the city.” The list of cities included San Francisco (CA), Austin TX), Philadelphia (PA), and New York City (NY). While these cities have earned a reputation as being female friendly, local governments don’t market themselves as such nor do they demonstrate any specific commitment to gender equity or the advancement of women and girls. They still have a long way to go to being truly feminist cities.

A Tale of Two Cities

Across the pond, Spain’s capital of Madrid is actively marketing their commitment to gender equity and feminist ideals in an attempt to boost tourism—and their annual growth rate in that sector already generates hot green envy amongst peers.

The Mayor and City Council of the city of 3.6 million has declared straight up, loud and proud, that Madrid is a feminist city. And they back it up with action. Just over a year ago, the City Council created the Department for Policies of Gender and Diversity “in order to coordinate efforts to eradicate the perverse effects produced by our patriarchal society.” Says Mayor Manuella Carmena Castrillo: “It is a task that involves all branches of government, even if these are themselves fueled by such a culture.”

Madrid’s effort to advance equity and inclusion is multi-faceted. The “Espacios de igualdad” (“Spaces of Equality”) are 13 projects located in districts around the city that “act as a place of reference for citizenship.” The “spaces” offer workshops and activities to raise awareness of how a culture transmits inequality. They have legal, psychological and professional development initiatives to train all citizens on how to promote gender equality and transform the culture.

The city has also launched two extra-curricular educational programs — “Escuelas de Empoderamiento (“Schools of Empowerment”) and Escuelas de Igualdad (“Schools of Equality”)—that “raise awareness and mobilize the population around issues of equality by disseminating the great contributions brought about by feminism and implications around the concept of gender.”

We could go on. But let’s stop and think about how such initiatives might fly in North American cities. In LiisBeth’s hometown of Toronto, a city similar in size and scale of influence to Madrid, it’s nearly inconceivable to imagine the current mayor or council, both conservative leaning, seizing on feminism as an opportunity.

Toronto’s mayor, John Tory, recently spoke at Move the Dial, a big-budget, Silicon Valley style event to promote women’s participation and advancement in STEM sectors. In a fireside chat with Canadian tech entrepreneur celebrity Michelle Romanov, Tory boasted about his team’s success in luring another hollywood-style bro-owned and led tech conference-Collision–which featured Eva Longoria (acress from Desparate Housewives) as a draw in 2017-to the city for the next three years. He said that a big attraction for organizers was Toronto’s diverse talent pool in STEM. In fact, he mentioned Toronto’s diversity—we counted five times—as a primary draw for people and companies who come to Toronto. Because Toronto is home to people from some 230 different nationalities who negotiate life here, eat each other’s cuisine, and live side by side largely peacefully.

But the city is far from being a beacon of a gender equity progress. Step one in creating a feminist city is making cities safe for women and girls and every six days, a woman is killed by her intimate partner in Canada—Toronto, as Canada’s most populous city, shares this burdensome stat. Only 30% of Toronto’s new city council are women. Toronto’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion website lists 10 specific equity initiatives—but not-a-one related to gender equity.  None of Canada’s TSX top 60 companies—the majority headquartered in Toronto-are headed by a woman. There are only two independent women-led entrepreneur co-working and incubator spaces in existence within city boundaries. Rather than working to shore up women’s entrepreneurship ecosystems, especially in the human-centered economy sectors, the city closed EMBER, the city’s only women-led/women-centred startup incubator program, in 2016. If you type the word “feminism” into the City of Toronto’s website, you get two hits (Madrid=3020 hits).  As a result, Toronto’s tourism and economic development strategy (Read: tech, tech, more tech, nothing but tech. Did we say tech?) looks like it is stuck in the 1990s—the decade the internet went mainstream. All this is unfortunate and dated if Madrid is any indication. Time to run toward where the ball is going-not where it’s been.

The city of Madrid is not perfect. But it takes action. In April, thousands across Spain took to the streets to protest the lenient sentencing of five men in the violent, video-taped “wolf pack” gang rape of a teen attending a bull running festival in Pamplona. Thousands of men and women across Spain took to the streets to protest. The ruling was seen as especially out of touch with the Madrid’s feminist leaning societal values. Madrid responded by banning the men from travelling to Madrid (where the victum was from), and stepping up initiatives to ensure the safety of women and girls in its streets. This included setting up “puntos violetas” purple coloured posts during city festivals where anyone feeling unsafe could get help or advice. The city has also funded a new hotline and specialized network to respond to gender violence. The “Neighborhoods for Good Treatment” initiative includes signs and door hangers for businesses and homes to signal they are safe spaces.

How a city responds to gender-based violence says a lot.

Last spring, Toronto also experienced a high-profile horrific case of gender-based violence—a man driving a van intentionally veered off the road and onto a sidewalk, targeting women. He managed to kill 10 people, eight of whom were women. On social media, the 25-year-old van driver had declared himself an incel (involuntary celibate) and was angry at woman for not wanting to have sex with him.

Torontonians held emotional vigils and flags few half-mast. But there was no follow on city funded initiative launched to advance safety for women and girls or promote gender relations dialogue in response. Surprisingly, Toronto has only one rape crisis centre for a city of 2.7 million. People wait for up to 18 months to get help. Furthermore, its meager funding is currently on the line.

That’s chilling, really.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. And lack of action around ensuring safe cities for women might soon hurt those municipalities who continue along a similar path. It’s not a situation a feminist city would accept.

Going Forward?

Move over creative class. It’s 2019. Today’s activists, still closeted intersectional feminists of all genders are the new  transformational urban “undesirables”. And listen up L.A., Berlin, Tokyo, London, Melbourne, Cape Town, and Toronto—embracing feminism and working to elevate gender equality can supercharge your economy—and more importantly, transform the lived experience of your citizens, in amazing, positive ways previously unimagined.

Imagine the sign on the highway as you cross into city limits: Welcome to The Feminist City: We Rise by Lifting Others. Please Take Our Values Home.

#womenaresafehere #transpeoplearesafehere #genderqueerpeople are safehere. 

Additional Reading:

https://www.liisbeth.com/2019/09/24/feminist-in-the-city/

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On October 19th, Mary Ng, the Canadian minister of small business and export promotion, announced another new initiative, the Women Entrepreneurship Fund, a two-year $20-million commitment to invest directly in women-owned and women-led businesses across all sectors of the economy to help them grow and reach export markets. The funding is another part of Canada’s first Women Entrepreneurship Strategy.

This new opportunity to procure direct investment is welcome news to many women entrepreneurs!

This funding announcement comes just four weeks after the announcement of $85M in funding to strengthen and improve access to women’s entrepreneurship programming. Surprisingly, this announcement received zero mainstream media attention, other than its mention in a recent opinion piece by LiisBeth publisher, PK Mutch. A Google search yields no results other than the Ministry’s own press release.

Jason Easton, Chief of Staff for Mary Ng, was not surprised about the lack of coverage, noting that in his experience, mainstream press often overlooks announcements related to women’s economic advancement.  Easton added that the $85M fund would be spread over five years. Approximately $15M in total is earmarked for national organizations. The remaining $70M will prioritize regional, non-institutional applicants.

This is good news for community-based women-led co-working spaces, incubators, accelerators, networking organizations, and mentorship programs.

To learn more about how Minister Ng views the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs, read the Q&A prepared for LiisBeth by the communications staff at the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada below.  It’s a good time to be a woman entrepreneur.

QUESTIONS FOR MINISTER NG, & ANSWERS

Q1.  What are some of the barriers that women entrepreneurs face?

Mary Ng: Women entrepreneurs face unique challenges compared to male entrepreneurs. They are less likely to seek financing and are more likely to be rejected or receive less money when they do. This has a huge impact on their ability to access capital.

As well, women entrepreneurs often have fewer mentorship and networking opportunities, face challenges in finding talent and expertise, and have difficulty securing large contracts and buyers. The impact of these barriers is clear: only 8.3% of women in Canada were self-employed in 2017 and only 16% of small businesses were women-led or -owned. We need to do better.

Q2.  What are you doing to help women succeed in business?

Ng: The Government of Canada is committed to addressing the barriers women face in starting or growing a business. That is why the Government is seeking to ensure the full and equal participation of women in the economy by increasing their access to financing, talent, networks and expertise through the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) announced in Budget 2018.

The strategy has several key elements, including the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, which aims to collect and gather data with the goal of providing information, data and best practices for women entrepreneurs. The WES Ecosystem Fund will provide funding for mentorship, networking and skills development through third-party initiatives. The Women Entrepreneurship Fund will directly invest in women-owned or -led businesses.

Q3.  What is the Government of Canada doing to help women entrepreneurs overcome access-to-financing barriers?

Ng: The Women Entrepreneurship Strategy will make significant investments to improve women’s access to capital, advice, best practices and targeted, gap-closing support. The Government increased the lending resources for the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to $1.4 billion. BDC’s Women in Technology Venture Fund was also increased to $200 million. As well, the Government provided Export Development Canada (EDC) with $250 million to help women-led businesses expand into international markets. The objective of all this is to support women-run businesses in starting up, scaling up and exporting.

Another program that will improve access-to-capital conditions for women entrepreneurs is the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative. Through two investment streams, it aims to improve gender balance among Canadian VC managers and technology-based companies.

Q4.  The Government has announced an investment of $105 million in women entrepreneurs. What are the goals of this investment?

Ng: The objective of this investment is to double the number of women-owned and women-led business by 2025 by increasing women’s access to capital, debt financing, networks and advice. This will be done through two initiatives.

One is the Women Entrepreneurship Fund. It will invest directly in women-led companies, enabling them to scale up and grow their businesses. The other is the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) Ecosystem Fund. It will invest in third-party, not-for-profit organizations so they can identify new and innovative ways to support women entrepreneurs by closing gaps in areas such as mentorship, networking and skills development.

Q5.  What is the Women Entrepreneurship Fund?

Ng: The Women Entrepreneurship Fund is a two-year $20-million commitment to invest directly in women entrepreneurs in a diversity of industries, providing eligible companies with funding to help them grow. The fund will focus on supporting women entrepreneurs’ efforts to scale up and grow their businesses, as well as help them expand into new markets. .

Q6.  What types of organizations are eligible to apply for funding under the Women Entrepreneurship Fund?

Ng: Women-owned or women-led for-profit small and medium-sized businesses (fewer than 500 employees), including individual business owners, partnerships, social enterprises, corporations, co-operatives and Indigenous businesses, are eligible to apply for funding under this initiative.

Q7.  What will the Entrepreneurship Fund do for women entrepreneurs?

Ng: The Women Entrepreneurship Fund will provide successful applicants with up to $100,000 in funding (non-repayable contribution) to grow their existing businesses and help them mature to a state where they can pursue opportunities in new markets.

Activities that are eligible for funding include the development of market strategies and supply chain integration. The fund will also support women-owned and women-led firms in scale-up, expansion and growth activities such as product development, inventory management, upgrades to equipment and technology improvements.

Q8.  Why is increasing the participation and success of women entrepreneurs important to Canada’s economic future?

Ng: We know that the full and equal participation of women in the economy represents untapped potential. According to McKinsey, we could increase Canada’s GDP by $150 billion by 2026 simply by advancing women in high-productivity sectors and raising their participation in the labour force.

It is essential to Canada’s competiveness that we support women entrepreneurs—not just because it’s the right thing to do but also because it’s good for the bottom line.

Q9.  How is the Government addressing barriers faced by women entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds?

Ng: Studies have shown that women from diverse backgrounds face additional barriers. The Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, a key pillar of the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy, aims to gather data on a variety of factors contributing to the current situation. Through the analysis of data, it will disseminate information, data and best practices for women entrepreneurs.

BDC is helping remove barriers for Indigenous women entrepreneurs. It is holding specific sessions of its WE Talk Business Boot Camps that are geared toward helping these women overcome barriers to entrepreneurship.

Q10.  How else is the Government of Canada supporting women?

Ng: The Women Entrepreneurship Strategy complements the Government’s broader efforts to advance gender equality, which include addressing pay equity, introducing more affordable childcare and putting an end to gender-based violence.

The Government is introducing a Gender Results Framework to guide future decision making and to measure its progress in fostering an economy that works for everyone. As well, it is moving forward with legislation to address pay equity in federally regulated sectors and is encouraging pay transparency by publishing its pay practices online.

In addition, the Government is helping women enter the trades with Apprenticeship Incentive Grants, implementing a National Housing Strategy that commits at least 25% of investments to projects that support women’s housing needs, and enhancing the Canada Child Benefit to help with the cost of raising children.

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An Alternative model of whiteness painted by Golnaz Golnaraghi

I am a first-generation immigrant woman from Iran, standing in a room comprised of mostly white folks. I had a paintbrush in my hands and found myself creating art that represented a model of whiteness, an alternative model.

I was participating in a workshop that was part of the White Privilege Conference – Global, held recently in Toronto. “Whiteness without White Supremacy,” was facilitated by Dr. Dori Tunstall, Dean of the Faculty of Design at OCAD University — the first black dean to hold such a post in North America.

What emerged in my art conveyed my vision of a model of whiteness with a strong and rooted core grounded in love, power sharing, co-creation, empathy, iterative-learning, equality, and belonging.

I hadn’t considered writing about the conference — until after, when I felt compelled to share my reflections. But first, a bit of background.

The conference was hosted by Ryerson University’s Office of Equity and Community Inclusion, headed by Vice President Dr. Denise O’Neil Green. It followed on the heels of the 2016 White Privilege Symposium hosted by Brock University. The WPC was founded in 1999 in the United States and brought to Canada by Dr. Eddie Moore Jr., a diversity, privilege and leadership consultant and educator who also founded The Privilege Institute.

At a Ryerson Soup and Substance Session held prior to the WPC, Dr. Moore explained that when he was a practitioner working towards a PhD and attending and presenting at conferences, he felt that diversity was the one topic that seemed stunted at a basic level, without a growth process. “We would never accept that if our kids stayed in math in the same course all the way through their high school.” So, he set out to make the WPC the Calculus course for diversity. The conference, utilizing what he calls an “inclusive relationship model,” offers a space for deep dialogue and solutions-based action around systems of supremacy, privilege, power, and leadership.

Walking into the theatre hall on my first day of the conference, I felt a palpable excitement in the room. There were more than 500 participants—one of the most diverse I’ve ever experienced—from a range of genders, races, religions, and sexual orientations and hailing from a broad mix of sectors, most notably education and non-profit.

The quality of the seven keynote speakers (four women and three men) was impressive—all accomplished thought leaders, educators, and activists from Canada and the United States. The conference also featured 65 workshops, a Youth Action Program for youth in grades 6-12, a marketplace of more than 20 vendors, and the 10^th annual Viola Desmond Awards & Banquet Dinner, named for a Black business woman who challenged racial segregation in Canada but was only recently recognized, becoming the first woman on Canadian currency.

For me, to attend this conference with hundreds of people (many white) eager to learn, explore and talk about diversity at the deepest levels, with a spirit of curiosity and respect, was a moving experience. I was inspired by the keynote speakers who dedicated their lives to social justice, despite potential risks of becoming targets of backlash.

At the Soup and Substance Session, Dr. Moore explained that risk: “What I’ve learned doing this conference is if you’re really good at this work, people will put your life in danger.” He said that was a significant threat, as the father of two young children. But he vowed never to let fear hold him back from taking action.

That is no easy thing. In her book So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo cites retaliation as the number one concern for people of colour engaged in racial justice work. Activists face harassment on social media, protests at public events, and threatening emails, just to name a few threats. The WPC in Toronto was no exception as protesters held a public rally on the last day of the event, calling a conference on white privilege “racist.”

But as Oluo aptly reflects in her book, “Conversations about racism should never be about winning. This battle is too important to be simplified. You are in this to share, and to learn. You are in this to do better and be better.”

The purpose of the conference was not about blaming a group of people but, instead, acknowledging the systemic causes of oppression and inequalities—and their effects. Ultimately the goal was to move us towards meaningful conversations, solutions and change, in societies and ourselves.

The conference explored many rich concepts, far too many to cover in one article. What I seek to share are themes from the keynote speakers that stood out for me.

We must reject talking about white privilege in a disembodied way

We cannot talk about white privilege without speaking about white supremacy, so said Toronto-based social activist and freelance journalist Desmond Cole. He emphasized that white supremacy is a system of power that designates value to individuals based on the perception of skin colour and ethnic ancestry, creating a racial hierarchy with notions of whiteness at the top. And, that white supremacy gives rise to white privilege.

Ritu Bhasin, an advocate for authenticity, inclusion and empowerment, defined white supremacy as the “ideology that white people are better, more valuable, more deserving, more competent, more able than people of colour and indigenous peoples; how it shows up and how it manifests is by way of power and privilege.”

Cole called on us to reject conversations that speak about white privilege in a disembodied way, as if white privilege were not connected to the history of colonialism, slavery, capitalism—a white privilege “that just exists, ‘cause it exists, ‘cause it exists and is sad and unfortunate, but that’s just the way it is. Heck, can you even change it? Maybe it’s a force of nature!”

Cole pointed out the ways white supremacy plays out in the policing system. Cole, himself, was arrested at a police board meeting where he took the microphone to speak out about Dafonte Miller, a Black teen who was allegedly severely beaten by an off-duty Toronto police officer and his brother. As a prominent voice and critic of the Toronto Police, Cole was also part of a successful effort to remove police presence at Toronto public high schools.

We must recognize privilege and how it affects us, in different ways

In basic terms, privilege is a set of benefits, advantages or ‘perks’ afforded people who fit into a particular social group. We hear about male privilege. But what about straight privilege? Ability privilege? Class privilege? White privilege? It may be difficult to recognize our own privilege while we are enjoying the perks, but we must seek to understand them based on different aspects of our identity such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, physical ability, etc.

We can be privileged in some aspects of life while experiencing oppression in other areas. To underline this point, Sian Ferguson’s White Privilege 101: A Quick and Dirty Guide offers an example of white people who believe they don’t experience privilege because they are of modest means. Being poor can be an oppression but does not negate the benefit that comes with being white. Cole drew an analogy of a 100-meter sprint: “Some people are starting at 70 meters and some people are starting at zero. And some people are going to get arrested as soon as the shot gun goes off to start running, so that they have to be put back to the beginning.”

For those who may struggle with seeing their own white privilege, Dr. Adrien K. Wing, Associate Dean at University of Iowa and editor of Critical Race Feminism, suggests a read of Dr. Peggy McIntosh’s 1989 article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” McIntosh, a white woman, offers a personal account of taking a closer look at her own daily experiences with white privilege, which she once took for granted. These are some of her observations:

• I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
• If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
• I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
• I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.
• I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.

Wing reminded us of recent incidents that might extend the list—Going to Starbucks While Black and Dozing at Yale While Black. “Every single day another one of these episodes happen and for some of you it can be like ‘Wow that’s sad,’ but for those of us subjected to that potentially every day, this is no joke.”

We must look at Allyship as not a noun that we are, but an action we do

That powerful comment, from one of the conference MC’s, captured the essence of the conference for me.

Cole urged the audience to stop using the word “allyship” and, instead, to consider, “Are you my friend? Cause my friend would see me being harmed and would stand in front of me to protect me…I want you to be my friend and I want you to be, ideally, if we can get really close, my family.” What I took from Cole’s message? We must move beyond talk, beyond calling ourselves allies, towards taking action—with courage and heart.

Dr. Jane Fernandes, President of Guilford College, and the first deaf woman to lead an American college or university, has also been active in addressing critical race justice issues. Growing up as a deaf white woman, she experienced a structure of hierarchy in the deaf community that mirrors the hearing community, with whiteness also at the top. “If we share an oppression with people of colour, like deaf black people and deaf white people, we share deaf and then we’re fighting for deaf rights, and we can forget that we are white.” But by understanding what goes on in the intersections, we can begin to dismantle and transform the system. Doing so makes our advocacy more inclusive and effective.

“Our choice when we know about our white privilege and we understand all these things about how it was created,” she said, “is to use it in such a way as to dismantle our system (of oppression).” That starts with small acts. “If everyone here disrupts the system a little bit five times a day, every day, that’s massive.”

We must be self-empowered warriors to make change

Dr. Shirley Cheechoo, who achieved a double first—first female and first Aboriginal Chancellor at Brock University—is also an award-winning artist, actor and filmmaker. She shared a moving account of her eight years in the residential school system where she experienced harrowing emotional, physical and sexual abuse. She turned to drugs and alcohol to blunt the pain—until she decided to quit, cold turkey, and turn her life around. She recalled her grandfather’s advice: “Forgive but never forget about it. Shirley do not let anyone choose your path in life. You have to let go of the old self. Self is not something already made. It is through your choice of actions that you create your best self.”

Cheechoo chose not to forget her past, but to stop being a victim of it. “We cannot wait for the next generation to make a difference. We are responsible, and we have the opportunity to make change.”

Motivated by a deep passion to serve indigenous youth, by helping them live their potential, she founded De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group (the only professional theatre company located on a reserve in Canada) and Weengushk Film Institute (a film and television training centre unlocking the creative potential of indigenous youth). “For years I have asked as a mother, as a woman in my community, how long, how many more years are we going to leave the children and the youth in the hands of unemployment? How many more people will have to fall into the trap that steals and butchers lives, dreams, and hopes of our next generation to come? We must learn to defeat the system and fix the problem now, and we must do it together. The Third World Country is right here, in our backyards.”

We must take the bridge on the path forward

Dr. John A. Powell, an internationally recognized author, speaker, and Director and Chancellor’s Chair at Hass Institute at UC Berkley, gave a rich talk on “Rethinking White Privilege in the Age of White Supremacy and Ethnic Nationality.”

Powell explained that when we talk about white privilege and ethnic nationalism, “We’re talking about a process of ‘othering,’ we’re talking about some people claiming that they belong, and those same people claiming that other people don’t belong.” He suggested that this process of ‘othering’ is a problem that has gained power into the 21^st century and is happening all over the world.

Othering, Powell said, can be thought about as “the way we marginalize people, the way we distribute resources, the way we recognize consciously and unconsciously as well as structurally, people’s humanity. You can ‘other’ someone without necessarily having a conscious animus towards someone.” And that can be based on a variety of dimensions—gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion and on and on.

“The opposite of ‘othering’ is not ‘saming,’ it’s belonging,” he said. “When you think about integration, inclusion, you think about people coming into your space, but it’s still your space. You can ask them to leave.” But belonging, he pointed out, is saying “It’s not your house, it’s not my house, it’s our house. When people really belong, they co-create the thing they belong to.” According to Powell, this is done through a process of bridging, listening, engaging, organizing, and love.

Ethnic nationalism, he pointed out, has become more explicit because of migration patterns and increased diversity, specifically that of the ethnic ‘other.’ That reminded me of narratives reflected in the 2016 elections in the United States, the global refugee crisis, the US travel ban, the US migrant crisis, as just a few examples.

He offered two dominant stories in society available to us: “One is breaking, which is stories about the fear of the ‘other,’ in some way threatening or taking something away from who we are. And the other is a bridging story, which is that we are actually going to enlarge the ‘we’ and the ‘other’ will be a part of that new we.” Bridging takes us towards a path of human connection and belonging.

Powell also talked to the changing demographics in Canada, citing Joe Friesen’s Globe and Mail article that said, “By 2031, one in three Canadians will belong to a visible minority. One in four will be foreign-born, the highest proportion since the end of the last wave of mass immigrantion that began around 1910.” Powell asked the audience to consider what Canada’s story might be and who will tell that story? “And so, will we bridge? Or will we break?”

We must move forward

And so, I left the conference with my painting of what an alternative model of ‘whiteness’ might look, realizing that it’s a ‘we-ness’ we must strive for, rooted at the core, grounded in love, power sharing, co-creation, empathy, equality, belonging. And the call to me, to take the bridge forward through action, translating that painting into all the narratives that shape our lives: schools, teams, workplaces, boardrooms, business models, advisory groups, government. And on and on.

For more information about the White Privilege Conference in Toronto, click here. For more information about the 2019 White Privilege Conference in Iowa, click here.

Additional Resources:

To watch recordings of the keynote speakers at the Ryerson White Privilege Conference, click here.

The post What We Are Talking About When We Talk About White Privilege: Themes From the White Privilege Conference in Toronto appeared first on LiisBeth.

I wear many hats. Journalist. Editor. Instructor. Youth and community program facilitator. Entrepreneur. Of all the titles, it’s the last one that I feel the most conflicted about claiming. Entrepreneurial certainly describes my spirit and journey: Thirteen years ago I incorporated a company, which my business partner and I have been running ever since; I have spearheaded several grassroots community initiatives and programs; and for the last two and a half years, I have been fully self-employed, meaning I pitch and land myself work or I don’t eat.

However, when I think entrepreneur—perhaps because of the magazines and books I’ve read, podcasts I’ve listened to, and representations I’ve seen on the topic—I largely think of a world to which I don’t belong. That world is rich with incubators, accelerators, networking mixers, co-working spaces, venture capitalists, angel investors, and Dragons’ Den-style pitch competitions. It’s not a world I was ever a part of (more on that here). Now, as I’ve aged out of the under 29 demographic and realize many others experience similar challenges to mine, I find myself wondering what it will take to bring more young women of colour in Ontario into that entrepreneurial world.

In November 2015, Ontario announced a $27 million investment in youth entrepreneurship as part of its larger $250 million Youth Jobs Strategy. The initiative includes a youth business accelerator program, which provides training to youth starting technology-based enterprises; a youth investment accelerator fund to provide financial and business skills training for startups; and campus-linked accelerators to help colleges and universities provide entrepreneurship resources for students and youth in their regions. The government is partnering on this project with the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs (ONE), a regional network of 90 centres across Ontario that provide in-person and online advice, funding, resources, and programs for people who want to start and grow successful businesses.

Much more than when I was starting out, the idea of “youth entrepreneurship” is catching on like wildfire. I am excited about this. But, from my own experiences, and those of people in my networks, I know that to ensure that these government-funded initiatives are inclusive, welcoming, and accessible—specifically for racialized women—it will take more than just dollars and cents. To find out what it will take for the government-funded startup space to serve racialized women better, I spoke to several young women entrepreneurs, the same ones from part one of this article, as well as women behind innovative entrepreneur-serving initiatives.

Ensuring Access

The word access comes up again and again in my conversations about what government-sponsored programs must consider when setting up initiatives to help young women of colour entrepreneurs. Doina Oncel, founder of hEr VOLUTION, a non-profit that aims to increase access to innovative education and employment services for young women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), says it’s important for these programs to listen to what young women need. To create hEr VOLUTION’s hv Think Tank Accelerator, which launched this past summer, Oncel drew on her own expertise having worked in social services, as well as her own experiences launching a business while living in a shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. The four-month program, funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, is geared towards young women 15 to 26 years old who are interested in entrepreneurship and face barriers. For example, they may be in conflict with the law or new to Canada or from a low-income household. Topics covered include public speaking, financial literacy, marketing, and business planning. “[Having] worked with this demographic, I understood that they have a lot of great ideas, they just don’t know where to go [for help],” Oncel says. “When it comes to entrepreneurship learning, you have a lot of programs available in the city, but in the ‘priority neighbourhoods,’ there aren’t a lot of programs.”

Aisha Addo, 24, is the founder of the Power to Girls foundation, a non-profit she started at 17 to “empower Afro-diaspora girls in the Greater Toronto Area and abroad,” and most recently, DriveHER, a ride-sharing service that’s like Uber but focused on providing safe rides for women. She points out that because so few programs are offered outside of the downtown core, barriers to access can include things like not having transit fare or the lengthy travel time to get to an accelerator or incubator. She also criticizes many existing programs for not doing enough outreach within priority communities. It’s one thing to have programs available, but the work doesn’t end there. It’s important to ensure that access isn’t limited to a privileged few, especially when government funds and a social justice mandate are at play. “If the people that are actually going to benefit from the program do not know about the program, you’re not really doing anyone a service,” says Addo.

Kristel Manes, director of Innovation Centre at Innovation Guelph, has spent the last three years researching the experiences of women entrepreneurs in southwestern Ontario. The research led to the creation of The Rhyze Project, a women’s entrepreneurship program that focuses on building self-esteem and self-confidence as well as the development of a soon-to-be-released training tool that will better equip mentors to serve clientele at business and innovation centres. She says outreach can be difficult and is a “never-ending job,” but advises other innovation centres to follow her lead. She says Innovation Guelph connects with the community in genuine ways at all levels ranging from sitting on several organizational boards to being present at libraries, community centres, and cultural events. Still, she admits it’s “hard work trying to get to everybody.”

Beyond outreach, making accelerators more accessible means making more options available that consider the varied experiences of young entrepreneurs, Addo says. For example, many accelerators she has come across require a full-time commitment, something she hasn’t been able to make due to her job. Or too often, incubators focus on developing tech businesses, like Ontario’s youth accelerator business program. “What happens if I’m not doing tech?” she asks.

Increasing accessibility also means having women of colour represented among the facilitators, programmers, and administrators of these initiatives. Lamoi, a 33-year-old spoken word artist and founder of Signature of a Mango jewellery from Brampton, Ont., says the number-one way to ensure engagement from women of colour is to have them at the helm of creating and delivering the programs. “We have a whole different life experience, even if we don’t all come from the same place,” she says. “The experience of non-white women is so completely different and especially now at a time of extreme racial tension and micro-aggressions.”

Creating Safe, Supportive Spaces

It’s this sentiment—that representation matters in incubation spaces—that Chivon John saw manifest when she founded Secrets of a Side Hustler (SOSH). It’s an organization that supports people who start and grow businesses while working full-time, a type of entrepreneurship increasingly popular among young people, according to Julia Dean CEO of Futurpreneur (formerly Canadian Youth Business Foundation). John says that about 90 per cent of the audience at her events are women of colour. She did not intend that when she started out, but she’s very proud her organization has drawn out this demographic. She attributes it to the fact that other women of colour likely gravitate to what they identify with. Someone who looks like them and may share a similar story is a rare occurrence in traditional entrepreneurial spaces. “I’ll go to lots of events and I don’t see as much of the diversity,” says John. When she recently travelled to Hangzhou, China, as one of 30 Canadian delegates selected to take part in the annual G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance Summit, she was the only woman of colour in the group. “There’s lots of great things that happen within the city, but it’s disappointing when you go and you don’t see somebody that looks like you,” she says.

Lack of representation led 27-year-old Alicia Bunyan-Sampson to create the Gyalcast Academy, a new six-week workshop series for young Black women who identify as creatives or entrepreneurs and live in one of Toronto’s underserved or “priority” neighbourhoods. She says it was imperative to build a space that acknowledges the layered experience of being a Black woman, and she grew “tired of waiting for a white guy who doesn’t understand us anyway to make it.”

From what she has seen, most entrepreneurial spaces are not created with women of colour in mind. She is often left thinking, “How are you running a community program for young entrepreneurs and not offering free tokens or food or child care? Why do I have to navigate through sexism and racism in a space that you claim is for me? Why is this space/resource adding more stress to my already stressful life with these unrealistic expectations of me?”

These are all factors she considered when building Gyalcast, a program that combines skill-building and mentorship with a self-care component. The world does not encourage Black women to be soft with themselves, Bunyan-Sampson explains. As someone who struggles with the application of self-care in her own life, she felt it was essential to include it within the program.

Janelle Scott-Johnson, a 24-year-old creative photographer and solopreneur who participated in the academy, says she found the self-care component especially effective. It’s something that was absent from a mainstream campus-linked accelerator she previously attended. Participants have time to speak openly about any negative issues they are facing, she explains, and share tips on how to navigate them through things like meditating or keeping a journal. It’s something women of colour need, Scott-Johnson says. “There are not a lot of spaces like that where you can actually talk about things that are bothering you and have a room full of people that won’t judge and will teach you ways to care for you and your mental and your physical [well-being].”

Gyalcast was an “amazing space” that Scott-Johnson felt she belonged in. “I feel like the people who started that up, they can relate to the participants,” she says. “They are women of colour, they are Black, they’ve been in my position trying to start up, and they provided the key things we need.”

This was intentional in the program’s design. “We need to create our own spaces to ensure they are safe,” Bunyan-Sampson says. “Spaces organized by people that look like you are important, and it’s something not a lot of people talk about.”

Moving Forward

When I look around my networks, I see no shortage of young women of colour with entrepreneurial ideas, spirit, and passion. Many of them have already started one or more businesses. What I do see is a shortage of capital, resources, support systems, and opportunities for growth and sustainability. Ontario is putting resources into youth entrepreneurship, and even women entrepreneurs, with the Women Entrepreneurs Ontario Collective, which is putting forth recommendations on how the province’s economy can be strengthened through strategy focused on women entrepreneurship and innovation.

But it’s important not to overlook systemic racism and implicit bias, and their impacts on the startup space, by taking a one-size-fits-all approach to entrepreneurship. It’s also important to remember that it’s not as simple as throwing funding at underserved communities. As Scott-Johnson cautions, ingenuity is easy to detect. Organizations chasing after funding dollars and setting up programs in communities that facilitators don’t know well simply doesn’t work. “It’s hella obvious when someone’s heart is in it and when it’s not,” she says.

Though the research is non-existent on young racialized entrepreneurs in Canada, we can combine anecdotal accounts with studies from the United States to arrive at some conclusions about possible solutions to this complex problem.

The large incubation spaces that are currently receiving serious money to help enterprises scale up need to improve outreach and access to underrepresented groups such as young women of colour. The key to this is increasing the number of women of colour in leadership roles within these organizations and structures. Remember, representation matters.

At the same time, the government needs to consider allocating funds to support the work that’s already being done by organizations such as Secrets of a Side Hustler and Gyalcast Academy, which are already effectively engaging this demographic. Ontario seems to be doing a little bit of this with its Strategic Community Entrepreneurship Projects program, which offers funding, resources, and training to people 15 to 29 years old starting a business through partnerships with community organizations. Some have specific service mandates, such as the Bimaaji’owin Anonidiwin project in Thunder Bay focused on Aboriginal youth, or the Vulnerable Somali Youth Entrepreneurship Program in Toronto’s Etobicoke area. It’s this type of demographic-specific approach that is more prevalent in the U.S.

Work also needs to be done to bridge the gap between small and large startup spaces. Manes told me that part of Innovation Guelph’s outreach strategy involves being known amongst referral sources, mainly professional services for small business owners (lawyers, accountants, insurance providers). Why not have grassroots, community-specific incubation spaces partner with larger accelerators and incubators and referring participants, sharing resources, and exchanging knowledge?

Emily Mills, founder of How She Hustles, a network of 5,000-plus diverse, social media–savvy women who “hustle,” however they define that word, is positive that there is much to be gained on both sides. A serial connector of people, Mills is interested in figuring out a way to create a meeting of the minds, a space where an older white professional woman can meet with a young racialized entrepreneur and learn from each other. Young women may yearn to understand the business world, she says, while older women may benefit from diversifying their network to remain relevant, find talent, and develop new ways of doing business. “There is a benefit if those two worlds can come together.”

Related Reading: “Not Your Incubator’s Entrepreneur (And That’s Your Loss)” by Priya Ramanujam

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