You are visiting Liisbeth’s archives! 

Peruse this site for a history of profiles and insightful analysis on feminist entrepreneurship. 

And, be sure to sign up for rabble.ca’s newsletter where Liisbeth shares the latest news in feminist spaces.

Categories
Our Voices

Savoy "Kapow" Howe Outside The Ring: Part Two

Savoy Howe in the ring.


Savoy “Kapow” Howe is the owner of Canada’s first woman-owned boxing club for women and transgender people. Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club is a sole proprietorship with 12 volunteer coaches and 250 members. In 2007, Howe worked with Brock University professor Cathy Van Ingen to develop the Shape Your Life program, offering free boxing to hundreds of survivors of violence at her gym. In Part Two of this two-part interview, Carmelle Wolfson spoke to Howe about Shape Your Life, coaching people with disabilities in her gym, and making the space more trans-inclusive. You can read Part One here.


CW: How did the Shape Your Life program for survivors of violence get started?
SH: That started when one of my students who happened to be a professor at Brock took one of my boxing camps. After the camp she said, “Savoy, what you’re doing is incredible. Would you consider doing this for survivors of violence?” I mean, I was already doing it for survivors of violence, but she wanted to have a program specifically for that. So we got our first two-year grant from the Attorney General’s Victim Services Unit and that helped us set up the program in 2007.
Shape Your Life isn’t offered here anymore. It ended in April. They decided to take a new turn and moved to the west end to the Bloor Street Boxing & Fitness Club. I always say crisis equals opportunity or when one door closes another opens. So we’ve decided to do something like Shape Your Life, but upgrade it a bit.
The program we are starting is called Outside the Ring. Our goal with that is to give two four-month memberships each month to four different communities: Indigenous, new Canadians, LGBTQ2S, and people with mobility issues. It’s all based on donations. The four-month membership will allow them to come as much as they want, and then who knows? If our fundraising goes well, if they want to keep going, maybe we’ll be able to give them another four-month membership. It’s hard when you give somebody a membership with a run-out date and they really want to keep going but the funds aren’t there. How can you kick somebody out just because of money, especially if it’s having an effect on their lives? So we do a lot for free. Even with Shape Your Life, we gave away over $10,000 worth of boxing to graduates.
CW: Have you had many people with mobility issues doing boxing?
SH: For a boxing club, yeah. We’ve done a workshop for 10 people with mobility issues. Then some of those became regular members. In the past few years we’ve had about five people who happen to use wheelchairs. We’ve had a visually impaired woman box with us. That was so much fun to figure out how to do because I love inventing. When you work with people in wheelchairs, you have to invent things. How can they do abs? Okay, you put rubber bands with a strap behind them and they pull away.
CW: How did you develop that training for people in wheelchairs?
SH: I came up with a lot of it. I worked for 16 years as an attendant to a woman who was a quadriplegic. She was an advocate for people with disabilities, so we travelled all over Canada and the States. She would present at conferences and I would be her attendant. She said, “Savoy, if you ever open a boxing gym, it has to be wheelchair accessible.” So that’s why we made sure speed bag racks are height adjustable, double-end balls are height adjustable. There are a couple heavy bags at the height where somebody in a wheelchair can get under them and get close enough to punch. I’ve just been working with people with disabilities for a long time. When I understand their limitations, we just figure ways to strengthen what they can use. Like I said, I love inventing. So give me a situation and I’ll figure it out.
The gal who is visually impaired, with shadow boxing she would take up lots of space, lots of footwork. The worst thing that was going to happen in the ring was she was going to touch a rope. She loved it because in life she’s always so careful with her stick. In there, she could just fly around and touch rope. When she was done she’d say “Savoy” and I’d come get her. She’d take me by the elbow and I’d give her stick to her. Often, people would be looking at her going, “Is she blind?” They had no idea she was blind because she loves to move. And she’s good. Just another thing that we invent that works and it’s good for her.
CW: How do you think a boxing club run by a woman is different than one run by a man?
SH: My priority with Newsgirls is to create a safe space. Safe? What do you mean? It’s boxing! But I mean a safe space so that people who might not normally come into a boxing gym will come here. Usually when people come here, they’re pretty nervous. But within the first hour they get a sense that this is different. Nobody is judging me. Nobody is doing anything that is scary to me. We just make sure it’s a really safe environment so that everybody can come in, including the trans community.

I spent 14 years in men’s gyms. You walk in there and you’re walking into a mist of male aggression. I think that’s really important for men because you’ve got to be willing to deal with your fears in a male-aggression way. If a guy walks into a male gym and he can’t handle the male aggression, he should be willing to get used to it, adapt to it. A lot of women walk into that environment and are like, “Nope, not for me.” Some of them might stay and have to slap knuckles and tell the men, “Don’t touch me.” Then they might leave. Some women will stay. They’ll fall so in love with the heavy bag that they’ll be like, “No, I’m going to be here whatever it takes.” It’s just a totally different environment. Male aggression is so different than female aggression. Well, I always call it female, healthy aggression.
You wouldn’t see that male aggression in here. When my fighters are getting ready for a fight, I will take them to other gyms so that they can see what that is like. It just keeps them a little bit safer in the ring because a lot of the women that are going to be competing against my gals are coming from male-dominated clubs.
As far as running the business, I have no idea. I have no idea how the owner kept the gym alive. He was charging people $40/month, month-to-month. You can’t survive that way because half the time people don’t pay you. You need a wee bit more of a commitment from people. But that’s boxing. A lot of gyms charged their members $40/month in the old days up until 10 years ago.
CW: Do you have any rules of conduct to make it a safer space?
SH: We have a trans inclusion policy, which you can find on our website. I am looking forward to looking at the code of conduct from a friend at a martial arts studio to see if that’s something I should have in place. But we haven’t got many problems. People get the vibe when they’re here that they’re not to disrespect anybody.
CW: What have you done towards trans inclusion and how has that approach evolved?
SH: When a few of my boxers transitioned, I wanted to still be able to provide a place for them to box. When we moved over here, that was when I was like, “Okay, let’s have one night where it’s co-ed.” Then the women would go home and tell their husbands, “Oh my God, it’s so much fun.” And the husbands were like, “Hey, we want in.” By that time, some of our trans athletes were saying, “If I ever wanted to train for a fight, how? I can’t. Once a week isn’t enough.” So then we opened it twice a week, and eventually three times a week.
Before we moved here, one of my athletes came to me and said, “Savoy, I’d like to compete.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “But I have something to tell you. I was born a man.” I was like, “Oh okay, I don’t know how this works. Let me call Boxing Ontario.” And they said they follow International Olympic Committee rules, and if these things have happened around IDs, hormones, and surgery, you’re good to go. So she fought the first bout for a trans woman athlete in boxing in Canada, as far as we know.
That’s when we started doing more outreach. Some of my boxers transitioned. We came here. We put a trans policy in place, and we started doing outreach through Shape Your Life. Any time we had new dates, we’d send it to the 519 Community Centre and Sherbourne Health Centre. I think it was mostly by word of mouth after that. Anytime I have a chance to talk to media, I always mention that so that anyone reading the article will know.
CW: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
SH: As a business owner, one of the cool things about trying to keep a place like this alive is it forces me to be really creative at the end of the month. Like, how can we come up with this amount of money in under a week? It forces me to invent things out of necessity. Some of the things we invent become a huge part of what we do.
The most recent thing we invented was called the one-two combo. It’s boxing for moms and their 10-to-13-year-old daughters. We just did the pilot of it, getting it ready for when kids are back in school. I’ll work with the adults. I have a coach who will work with the kids. We’ll work at the same time separately, and then for the last half hour we’ll bring everybody back together to do some bonding between the moms and their daughters. We’ll do an eight-week session and we’ll see how it goes. I think it’s going to work. I think parents are ready to have their little daughters in something like boxing, just with how the world is going.
And the same with Outside the Ring. Shape Your Life pulls out, takes their funding with them, and it’s like, “Holy shit. What are we going to do?” So I just do lots of writing. That’s how I solve things. I would think of what the best-case scenario would be. What if we have another new and exciting program that has a similar feel, but maybe serves a different population? How are we going to fund it? I have no idea. What if I could get a certain amount of people that would donate $5/month and we’ll call them Newsgirls Sugar Mamas? We include all genders, so Sugar Mamas/Glucose Guardians. It reignites a certain excitement about being an inventor.


For more information on becoming a Sugar Mama/Glucose Guardian donor, visit the Newsgirls website.

Categories
Our Voices

Savoy “Kapow” Howe Outside The Ring: Part Two

Savoy Howe in the ring.

Savoy “Kapow” Howe is the owner of Canada’s first woman-owned boxing club for women and transgender people. Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club is a sole proprietorship with 12 volunteer coaches and 250 members. In 2007, Howe worked with Brock University professor Cathy Van Ingen to develop the Shape Your Life program, offering free boxing to hundreds of survivors of violence at her gym. In Part Two of this two-part interview, Carmelle Wolfson spoke to Howe about Shape Your Life, coaching people with disabilities in her gym, and making the space more trans-inclusive. You can read Part One here.


CW: How did the Shape Your Life program for survivors of violence get started?

SH: That started when one of my students who happened to be a professor at Brock took one of my boxing camps. After the camp she said, “Savoy, what you’re doing is incredible. Would you consider doing this for survivors of violence?” I mean, I was already doing it for survivors of violence, but she wanted to have a program specifically for that. So we got our first two-year grant from the Attorney General’s Victim Services Unit and that helped us set up the program in 2007.

Shape Your Life isn’t offered here anymore. It ended in April. They decided to take a new turn and moved to the west end to the Bloor Street Boxing & Fitness Club. I always say crisis equals opportunity or when one door closes another opens. So we’ve decided to do something like Shape Your Life, but upgrade it a bit.

The program we are starting is called Outside the Ring. Our goal with that is to give two four-month memberships each month to four different communities: Indigenous, new Canadians, LGBTQ2S, and people with mobility issues. It’s all based on donations. The four-month membership will allow them to come as much as they want, and then who knows? If our fundraising goes well, if they want to keep going, maybe we’ll be able to give them another four-month membership. It’s hard when you give somebody a membership with a run-out date and they really want to keep going but the funds aren’t there. How can you kick somebody out just because of money, especially if it’s having an effect on their lives? So we do a lot for free. Even with Shape Your Life, we gave away over $10,000 worth of boxing to graduates.

CW: Have you had many people with mobility issues doing boxing?

SH: For a boxing club, yeah. We’ve done a workshop for 10 people with mobility issues. Then some of those became regular members. In the past few years we’ve had about five people who happen to use wheelchairs. We’ve had a visually impaired woman box with us. That was so much fun to figure out how to do because I love inventing. When you work with people in wheelchairs, you have to invent things. How can they do abs? Okay, you put rubber bands with a strap behind them and they pull away.

CW: How did you develop that training for people in wheelchairs?

SH: I came up with a lot of it. I worked for 16 years as an attendant to a woman who was a quadriplegic. She was an advocate for people with disabilities, so we travelled all over Canada and the States. She would present at conferences and I would be her attendant. She said, “Savoy, if you ever open a boxing gym, it has to be wheelchair accessible.” So that’s why we made sure speed bag racks are height adjustable, double-end balls are height adjustable. There are a couple heavy bags at the height where somebody in a wheelchair can get under them and get close enough to punch. I’ve just been working with people with disabilities for a long time. When I understand their limitations, we just figure ways to strengthen what they can use. Like I said, I love inventing. So give me a situation and I’ll figure it out.

The gal who is visually impaired, with shadow boxing she would take up lots of space, lots of footwork. The worst thing that was going to happen in the ring was she was going to touch a rope. She loved it because in life she’s always so careful with her stick. In there, she could just fly around and touch rope. When she was done she’d say “Savoy” and I’d come get her. She’d take me by the elbow and I’d give her stick to her. Often, people would be looking at her going, “Is she blind?” They had no idea she was blind because she loves to move. And she’s good. Just another thing that we invent that works and it’s good for her.

CW: How do you think a boxing club run by a woman is different than one run by a man?

SH: My priority with Newsgirls is to create a safe space. Safe? What do you mean? It’s boxing! But I mean a safe space so that people who might not normally come into a boxing gym will come here. Usually when people come here, they’re pretty nervous. But within the first hour they get a sense that this is different. Nobody is judging me. Nobody is doing anything that is scary to me. We just make sure it’s a really safe environment so that everybody can come in, including the trans community.

I spent 14 years in men’s gyms. You walk in there and you’re walking into a mist of male aggression. I think that’s really important for men because you’ve got to be willing to deal with your fears in a male-aggression way. If a guy walks into a male gym and he can’t handle the male aggression, he should be willing to get used to it, adapt to it. A lot of women walk into that environment and are like, “Nope, not for me.” Some of them might stay and have to slap knuckles and tell the men, “Don’t touch me.” Then they might leave. Some women will stay. They’ll fall so in love with the heavy bag that they’ll be like, “No, I’m going to be here whatever it takes.” It’s just a totally different environment. Male aggression is so different than female aggression. Well, I always call it female, healthy aggression.

You wouldn’t see that male aggression in here. When my fighters are getting ready for a fight, I will take them to other gyms so that they can see what that is like. It just keeps them a little bit safer in the ring because a lot of the women that are going to be competing against my gals are coming from male-dominated clubs.

As far as running the business, I have no idea. I have no idea how the owner kept the gym alive. He was charging people $40/month, month-to-month. You can’t survive that way because half the time people don’t pay you. You need a wee bit more of a commitment from people. But that’s boxing. A lot of gyms charged their members $40/month in the old days up until 10 years ago.

CW: Do you have any rules of conduct to make it a safer space?

SH: We have a trans inclusion policy, which you can find on our website. I am looking forward to looking at the code of conduct from a friend at a martial arts studio to see if that’s something I should have in place. But we haven’t got many problems. People get the vibe when they’re here that they’re not to disrespect anybody.

CW: What have you done towards trans inclusion and how has that approach evolved?

SH: When a few of my boxers transitioned, I wanted to still be able to provide a place for them to box. When we moved over here, that was when I was like, “Okay, let’s have one night where it’s co-ed.” Then the women would go home and tell their husbands, “Oh my God, it’s so much fun.” And the husbands were like, “Hey, we want in.” By that time, some of our trans athletes were saying, “If I ever wanted to train for a fight, how? I can’t. Once a week isn’t enough.” So then we opened it twice a week, and eventually three times a week.

Before we moved here, one of my athletes came to me and said, “Savoy, I’d like to compete.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “But I have something to tell you. I was born a man.” I was like, “Oh okay, I don’t know how this works. Let me call Boxing Ontario.” And they said they follow International Olympic Committee rules, and if these things have happened around IDs, hormones, and surgery, you’re good to go. So she fought the first bout for a trans woman athlete in boxing in Canada, as far as we know.

That’s when we started doing more outreach. Some of my boxers transitioned. We came here. We put a trans policy in place, and we started doing outreach through Shape Your Life. Any time we had new dates, we’d send it to the 519 Community Centre and Sherbourne Health Centre. I think it was mostly by word of mouth after that. Anytime I have a chance to talk to media, I always mention that so that anyone reading the article will know.

CW: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

SH: As a business owner, one of the cool things about trying to keep a place like this alive is it forces me to be really creative at the end of the month. Like, how can we come up with this amount of money in under a week? It forces me to invent things out of necessity. Some of the things we invent become a huge part of what we do.

The most recent thing we invented was called the one-two combo. It’s boxing for moms and their 10-to-13-year-old daughters. We just did the pilot of it, getting it ready for when kids are back in school. I’ll work with the adults. I have a coach who will work with the kids. We’ll work at the same time separately, and then for the last half hour we’ll bring everybody back together to do some bonding between the moms and their daughters. We’ll do an eight-week session and we’ll see how it goes. I think it’s going to work. I think parents are ready to have their little daughters in something like boxing, just with how the world is going.

And the same with Outside the Ring. Shape Your Life pulls out, takes their funding with them, and it’s like, “Holy shit. What are we going to do?” So I just do lots of writing. That’s how I solve things. I would think of what the best-case scenario would be. What if we have another new and exciting program that has a similar feel, but maybe serves a different population? How are we going to fund it? I have no idea. What if I could get a certain amount of people that would donate $5/month and we’ll call them Newsgirls Sugar Mamas? We include all genders, so Sugar Mamas/Glucose Guardians. It reignites a certain excitement about being an inventor.


For more information on becoming a Sugar Mama/Glucose Guardian donor, visit the Newsgirls website.

Categories
Activism & Action Uncategorized

MAPPING FEMINIST ENTERPRISE IN TORONTO

Mellisa Shaddick and Christine Gresham

 

In a city like Toronto where there is no shortage of fun things to do in the evening, it’s hard to imagine anyone would want to spend three hours in a spartan meeting room, volunteering to help two feminist entrepreneurs identify and pin the geolocation of more than 10,000 women-led and majority women–owned enterprises in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

But people did sign up—and they showed up. City of Women founders Mellisa Shaddick and Christine Gresham are working to create the first online, mobile-friendly feminist enterprise city map in Canada. They kicked off the workathon with a short introduction of the project, some instructions and, with bowls of Jujubes for fuel, the volunteers got to work.

Each volunteer chose a neighbourhood they lived in or were familiar with, then checked businesses listed on Business Improvement Association (BIA) sites (there are 21 BIAs in Toronto) to identify potential enterprises, and researched each company to determine which were women-led or majority women–owned. So far, City of Women have verified and mapped more than 95 enterprises. An additional 200 enterprises self-identified and registered through their website, which will then get verified before being added to the map.

Shaddick and Gresham went to university together but didn’t reconnect until a few years ago when Shaddick returned from a seven-year stint in Australia. Their entrepreneurial “click” came after they were frustrated over how difficult it was to find a woman-identified bike mechanic for an event they were holding. Says Shaddick, “There had to be a better way for people to source products and services made by companies run by and owned by women.” Once she read Rebecca Solnit’s October 2016 New Yorker article titled “City of Women”, the solution became obvious to her.

The City of Women Initiative

In that poignant article, Solnit, who has also published several books and urban atlases, calls out the gendered nomenclature of our cities where the vast majority of our streets, subway stations, buildings, and parks are named after prominent men. She writes, “I can’t imagine how I might have conceived of myself and my possibilities if, in my formative years, I had moved through a city where most things were named after women and many or most of the monuments were of powerful, successful, honoured women. “

To address the “manscape,” Solnit created the first “City of Women” map, which alters the existing New York City subway map and makes visible the history and contributions of women who shaped New York by renaming the subway stations after them.

While they loved Solnit’s concept, Shaddick and Gresham decided to take a different approach. Shaddick explains: “The Solnit approach is wonderful and heartwarming and contemporary and impeccable. For us, it is much more of an artistic statement, and we are not artists! We are time-poor feminists who are interested in creating something that we can use in our daily lives—to locate, support, connect and hopefully inspire women-identified, small-business owners.”

Though Shaddick and Gresham are passionate about the idea, they are also realistic about the time it will take to complete the project. “It’s a lot of work, and we can’t do it alone,” says Shaddick.

A Tightly Curated List

Before they add an enterprise on the map with a custom pin and a link to its website, the group verifies that the company meets the criteria of having women-led, majority-women ownership. They usually do this with a phone call. Says Gresham, “So often, we assume an enterprise is owned by a woman because she seems to be the face of the business. But often we find the enterprise is 100% or majority-owned by a male, typically a boyfriend, husband, or sometimes even a father.”

A New Zealand study titled “Critical Yet Invisible: The ‘Good Wife’ in the New Zealand small firm”, authored by Claire Massey at Massey University, found that of the 250 firms surveyed, a surprising number of women played lead roles in small enterprises that were entirely or majority-owned by significant others, leaving the women’s contributions unacknowledged legally or in research about entrepreneurs.

Abigail Slater, a volunteer in Toronto, says that’s exactly why City of Women’s entrepreneurial mapping research is so important. “Not only will it make it easier for enterprises looking to advance women entrepreneurs by genderizing their procurement policy, it also gives visibility to the issue of ownership. Too many women play lead roles in startups or small and medium enterprises and are CEOs, COOs, or co-founders in name only. They have no ownership stake, which means their contributions are both at risk should the relationship dissolve, and their contributions to the entrepreneurial economy goes uncounted.”

Interested in Helping Out?

The next City of Women mapping event is Wednesday, September 23 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Centre for Social Innovation at 215 Spadina Ave. To register, click here.

If you run a feminist enterprise and would like to get pinned, register your business for inclusion on the map by clicking here.

Categories
Our Voices

All Jacked Up on Bow Ties

all-jacked-up-on-bowties-3

Few could say they found their identity as an entrepreneur more than Jack Jackson. Jackson, who was transitioning to a gender identity that embraces both masculine and feminine, grew frustrated trying to find clothes to match that sense of self. “I tended to shop in the men’s section but ended up having to get them altered to fit my body,” says the 42 year old. “It was really expensive.”

Jackson had also recently moved to Toronto from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, was awaiting a visa to work in Canada and searching for a way to earn a living. Returning to a former career in finance administration was off the table. “I did not want to go back to a corporate job wearing a suit that felt stupid or being treated as female.”

Categories
Activism & Action Transformative Ideas

The Rise of Gender Capitalism

THE-RISE-OF-GENDER-CAPITALISM

LiisBeth is proud to re-print this amazing interview with Sarah Kaplan, Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management (University of Toronto) by Karen Christiansen, Editor-in-Chief of Rotman Management magazine at the University of Toronto.

Sarah’s recently published article, The Rise of Gender Capitalism, published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2014, can be found here:

Karen: You have been researching an emerging movement that lies at the nexus of gender and investing. Please describe it.

Sarah: What we are seeing is a variety of initiatives that are examining ‘how capital is deployed’, and making sure that it’s done in ways that help to achieve economic justice for women and girls. All sorts of loosely-connected organizations and individual actors are involved, but they’re all aligned around making progress in this area.

These initiatives recognize that only six per cent of venture capital funding goes to women-led businesses; that only a small percentage of participants in start-up accelerators are women; and that there are very few women in leadership positions in large financial institutions — or any companies, for that matter. The fact is, around the world, women have much less access to capital or even basic banking and financial products than do men, and this is hurting the global economy. The goal of these
initiatives is to create growth, prosperity and economic value by rectifying these problems.

Karen: What does it mean to invest ‘with a gender lens’?

The way we see the world affects what we do in the world, so the lens aspect is about shifting the way we see things. The gender part of it is about making sure we consider how what we ‘see’ is influenced by gender. When you put the two together, investing with a gender lens means using a gender analysis to uncover hidden opportunities and recognize bias in the deployment of capital. Clearly, it can’t be true that only six per cent of potential start-ups should be led by women. There is a bias there. Recent
research shows that if you take an identical business plan — same PowerPoint, same content — and have it narrated by either a man or a woman, 60 per cent of investors will choose to invest
in the man’s business plan.

It’s not that anyone is trying to be sexist; these are implicit biases,and both men and women possess them. So, this approach says, why not recognize that these biases exist and begin to deploy capital towards opportunities that are being overlooked? It can also apply to the creation of products and services. Companies across industries should be thinking more carefully about the different requirements of men and women. For years, car companies tested their vehicles with female crash test dummies in the passenger seat; only recently have they started putting them in the driver’s seat. It was as if, somehow, women weren’t driving cars!

In some industries, like pharmaceuticals, there are very high stakes. In the drug-approval process, firms have been required to test on both men and women, but they have not been required to report the gender-disaggregated data. As a result, we don’t know if men and women should be taking different dosages, or if interactions might occur due to different hormone levels. We’re only learning now, for example, that some sleep drugs have radically different effects on men and women. Paying attention to
gender-disaggregated data would enable pharmaceutical firms to provide much more effective products — and reduce their liability. There are all sorts of similar hidden opportunities just waiting to be found if you look at investments through a gender lens.

Categories
Our Voices

Meaning is the New Money

sheo-meaning-is-the-new-money

In 2014, Vicki Saunders, founder of SheEO, put her thoughts down on paper and her book “SheEO: Think Like a SheEO” was soon after, published. What make this entrepreneurship book unique is its enthusiastic call to women to build businesses that reflect their values and do so on their own terms.  For our inaugural edition of Liisbeth, we are featuring the chapter “Meaning is the New Money” in the belief that you will find her words energizing and motivating!


 

I was in New York at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Conference after 9-11 with all of the Global Leaders for Tomorrow in a room and our keynote was Hillary Clinton. I will never forget her opening line: “I was asked to come and speak to you about leadership but my first question is: leadership for what?” I could see half of the audience wondering, “What’s she talking about? I don’t get it, I’m on a path to the top of my company” and the other half thinking, “That’s exactly what I’m struggling with. I’m number two at my Fortune 100 company and I’m 32. Is this all there is? Why am I here? What is the point of my life?”

SheEO principle two is that meaning is the new money. What I mean by this is that more than ever before, people are asking their version of Hillary Clinton’s question. They want to know that their work has meaning. That it creates a positive impact. That it moves the needle on creating the kinds of changes that are needed in the world.

There are all kinds of research to back this principle up. For instance, a study of Millennials done for the financial services sector, which typically attracts young people highly motivated by money, found that they “are looking for more in life than `just a job,’ or a steady climb through the corporate ranks. They want to do something that feels worthwhile, they take into account the values of the company when considering a job….” And a recent Millennial Branding report found that the vast majority of people in this demographic—72%–seek work with a greater purpose.

To meet this need, organizations like Escape the City have sprung up on line. Founded by two young British management consultants who found the corporate world stultifying, Escape the City is, in their own words, “a global community for people who want to ‘do something different’ with their careers. We help talented people escape or avoid corporate jobs….We believe there is more to life than doing work that doesn’t matter to you.” Similarly, Amanda Minuk’s BMeaningful.com is “founded on the belief that there is more to life than a pay check.”

But it’s not only young people who crave meaningful work. The organization NetImpact, in their What Workers Want in 2012 talent report of 1726 currently employed Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, and Millennials, as well as university students about to enter the workforce, rank “having a job where I can make an impact” as more important than a prestigious career, wealth, or being a community leader. As the hundreds of millions of Baby Boomers around the world reach retirement and face an average of 20 plus years of life, they’re asking themselves where they want to devote their energy, passion, and expertise to create a better world.

It is women who are, by far, leading the way in this trend. In their study, NetImpact discovered that 60% percent of women polled, both currently employed and students, say that working for a company that prioritizes social and environmental responsibility is very important to them, compared to approximately 40% of men. And 30% of working women said they would be willing to take a 15% pay cut for a job with impact, compared to only 19% of men. “Women think about the future, and what sort of world is being created for future generations,” remarks Theresa May, British Home Secretary and former UK Minister for Women and Equalities. In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on the organization TechWomen, which brings women from third world countries to the Silicon Valley for networking and mentorship, LinkedIn executive Florina Xhabija commented on this female focus on making a difference: “The projects these women suggest—they’re not like Instagram for dogs, they are trying to solve real issues.” Rather than focusing on profit-making and exit strategies, as many male entrepreneurs do, women tend to focus on finding meaningful solutions to real problems.

There are so many SheEOs out there doing amazing things. As just one example, I think of Debbie Sterling, the creator of GoldieBlox, a company that builds games for girls to inspire future engineers. Debbie didn’t even know there was such a career as engineering until a high school math teacher suggested she might want to major in it in college. After graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering and product design, she looked at the fact that 89% of all engineers worldwide are men and was determined to close that gender gap. “We believe,” she writes on her website, “there are a million girls out there who are engineers. They just might not know it yet. We think GoldieBlox can show them the way.”

The success of this two-year-old company shows how powerful meaning-based organizations can be. Started through a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, GoldieBlox now has products in Target, Toys R Us, and over 1000 mom and pop toy stores. Recently the company beat out 20,000 companies in a fan-voting contest sponsored by Intuit to score a free 30-second ad in the Superbowl, where half-minute spots typically go for $4 million.

While Debbie Sterling clearly found her calling, it’s not as easy for many young women. In a recent conversation with a group of amazing young university women, I asked them what they were worried about. One young woman said, “I want to do something that the six-year old me would be proud of.” I was floored. What a beautiful desire. It was a brilliant insight. And yet, just in her second year, she felt like she was being pushed away from that desire and pressured to pick the right, the accepted, the chosen path according to her peers and professors.

Fortunately, the desire for meaningful work, combined with the recognition of SheEO principle one that everything is broken, has resulted in an upsurge of social entrepreneurs, women and men who are creating organizations with the aim of solving social problems or effecting social change through innovative solutions. Social entrepreneurship has exploded in the last ten years, going from an undefined phrase to a variety of programs offered at more than 35 business schools around the world. There are on-going arguments over who exactly should be classified as a social entrepreneur, but typically they draw upon models from both the business and nonprofit world, measure performance in not only profit and return, but positive return to society, and operate in all kinds of large and small organization as nonprofits, for-profits, and hybrids.

For me, what the definition of a social enterprise is, whether the term is already passé, or whether you formally consider yourself a social entrepreneur or not, is not the point. Upon reflection, you may indeed decide to structure your organization around the principles and practices of social entrepreneurship. Whether you do or not, I believe it is absolutely crucial that you get in touch with what gives meaning to your life and figure out how to build a business around that. Or if you already have a business, to make sure that it is aligned with what matters to you most. Meaning gives you the “why” of what you are doing, and in order to build a powerful “what,” you need to first be in touch with your powerful “why.”

 

–Excerpt from:  Think Like a SheEO: Succeeding in the Age of Creators, Makers, and Entrepreneurs – Jun 2 2014 by Vicki Saunders (Author), M.J. Ryan (Author)