Dr. Wendy Cukier, the founder and director of Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute, is one of the principal authors of the State of Women’s Entrepreneurship in Canada 2020, published by the Women’s Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (WEKH) last month.

LiisBeth spoke with Cukier about the recommendations in the report, the challenges presented by COVID-19, the support women need moving forward and what women’s entrepreneurship should look like in the future.

LiisBeth: What was the process of pulling off such a mammoth report during a global pandemic?

Wendy Cukier: We had the report ready to go when COVID-19 hit, so we shifted gears. We did a lot of work with the government and others to get information out on supports for women entrepreneurs. We ran webinars, and we also very quickly did an analysis of programs and consulted with close to 300 groups and entrepreneurs on where the gaps were. So, we took on a bit of an advocacy role for self-employed women and those who were falling between the cracks. And then with COVID-19, what we showed very quickly and very clearly was that COVID-19 was amplifying inequality in a very significant way.

LiisBeth: What was the process of collecting this data?

Wendy Cukier: I’ve done lots of work on things like the wage gap and the impact of unpaid work. When COVID-19 hit, just with my own eyes, I saw the impact on people in my office, on entrepreneurs. I was working with the data that was coming out of different places, but even on Zoom calls, you’d be bombed by little kids all over the place. And it was so very obvious—the difference in terms of the extent to which women have always borne the lion’s share of the unpaid work.

The impact of COVID-19 on…women entrepreneurs’ self-reported productivity…layoffs, the extent to which women entrepreneurs reported negative impacts on their ability to run their business and even their mental health—all of those things are very much supported by the empirical data from different surveys, but quite honestly, I saw it all with my own two eyes.

LiisBeth: What are some of the key findings in the report?

Wendy Cukier: The big thing is the burden of unpaid work, and that is just crushing. Not just for women who are in the workforce, but women who are self-employed or entrepreneurs. It doesn’t really matter if you’re rich or you’re poor. Certainly, people who are lower on the socioeconomic front are often less well equipped—they often don’t have access to high-speed network…a workspace. But even wealthy middle-class women have lost their caregivers and other kinds of supports that had previously enabled them to pursue their entrepreneurial activities. So, the experience of the crushing burden of unpaid work and childcare is pretty severe, right across socioeconomic classes, across sectors, across size, across everything.

When we look at what’s happening with women entrepreneurs and the programs they need to support them, we need to recognize self-employment across a range of sectors—not just tech—as well. If we don’t tackle that definitional problem, we’re effectively ignoring the needs of 900,000 women entrepreneurs. Because we know that women are more likely to be in services, in social enterprises. So not recognizing that excludes a big percentage of women.

We also recognize there are big differences in the experiences of women who are racialized, women who are Indigenous, women who are in rural communities, women with disabilities. And what we showed was COVID-19 was exacerbating all of those.

One of the things that makes me apoplectic is there’s been a ton of stuff about how women have been leading the battle against COVID-19. Jacinda Ardern (the prime minister) from New Zealand. In Canada, leading medical officer, Theresa Tam,—we see her every day reassuring us, it’ll be fine. It’s women, women, women on the frontlines. Yet, if you look at who is being consulted and testifying before the parliamentary committees on what we need for the recovery, 51 per cent of the population (women) is pretty much missing.

I think what’s hugely important is that we have a gender and diversity lens for recovery or we’re going to lose decades of progress.–Wendy Cukier

LiisBeth: What are some of the recommendations of the report?

Wendy Cukier: Well, we have enough information to prioritize certain things like thinking about childcare and homeschooling; making sure that we have intersectional lens; that we understand that access to broadband and infrastructure is absolutely fundamental; and the impact of COVID-19 is highly differentiated based on where you live. It’s a whole cluster of things, and if you don’t have those basic needs, then it’s pretty hard to engage in economic activity. Those things are pretty straightforward.

One of the things I have a preliminary sense of, but we haven’t dug into as deeply as we need to: There are a lot of funding opportunities for incorporated companies that are already at a certain level of sales. So while there may be gaps there and … bias in financing… especially the venture capital space, what I’m really interested in right now is how we deal with pre-revenue, small revenue, micro-businesses that seem to have fallen through the cracks. If you think about the fact that women’s businesses tend to be smaller, newer, and under financed, it’s almost like chopping down all the seedlings. We have to really be attentive to nurturing those early-stage organizations, some of which may never grow, some of which may remain side hustles or supplements to traditional employment. If you care about growth, you also need to care about the fact that these new startups and micro-businesses that women tend to start are being crushed.

LiisBeth: Thank you so much for speaking with us!

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Last week I heard, met—and got to put my arm around the waist of the amazing Gloria Steinem as she graciously posed for a photo with me after a keynote speech she gave in Toronto. As I stood beside her, my mind sparkled like a string of holiday lights, and my heart was on fire with hope, but to the touch, she felt breakable, delicate.

And there it was: The feminist movement, its power to inspire, and frail progress embodied perfectly in one of its most dedicated, creative and impactful voices.

Steinem, now 84, was in Toronto on December 12 to participate in “The Courage of a Movement”, an event organized by the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP). More than 700 people attended. While ticket prices were steep, there were many sponsored tickets available.

Steinem opened her talk by saying how much she admires Canada’s First Nations land acknowledgment practice and conceded that her homeland often has a huge influence on Canadians. “I promise to go back, and try to do something about the ridiculous situation we have.

“I would just ask you to remember that [Donald Trump] was not popularly elected. He lost by six million votes. Three for other candidates, three for Hillary Clinton. He’s just there because of our crazed institution called the electoral college, which just tells us we have to get rid of it. Incidentally, it is a legacy of the slave states. So we are trying to treat him as a great instruction on everything that we need to do, right? And we are woke. I just want to say. We are seriously woke.”

The audience erupted.

Other key points in her talk included the importance of understanding that history began in North America long people the Europeans showed up, and how many early cultures did not have gender pronouns, or words for race. “I mean, the paradigm was a circle, not a pyramid. It was really profoundly different.

“Our whole world is divided into two kinds of people, those who divide everything into two (or see things in binary terms) and those who don’t.”

She pointed out that normalized violence against women is the major determinant of whether a country is violent on its own streets and whether it will use violence against another country. In other words how a country treats its women is how it operates in the world.

The Courage of a Movement Panel, from left to right: actress Patricia Fagan (Canadian Stage Company, Soulpepper), writer, lecturer, political activist and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem, moderator Marci Ien, 15-year-old blogger and author of “Momentus: Small Acts, Big Change” Hanna Alper, and Manager of Consent Comes First, Ryerson University, Farrah Khan.

During the panel session that followed Steinem’s keynote, she was asked if she believed society has truly made any progress towards gender equality and social justice.

Steinem noted that gender equity is still far off and advancements are fragile, however, she believes we have made significant progress at a key and fundamental level. “We’ve actually changed the majority consciousness. Not the power structure. Not where the money is. But consciousness comes first. So, that’s big.”

She added that at this time in history, people who been seriously deprived by hierarchy and patriarchy are increasingly mad as hell. This is also big.

To another question posed by an audience member – “Will things get better in the future?” – Steinem replied “I’m a hopeaholic. Yes, we do need to be realistic. But I do think hope is kind of planning. I have to say that part of the good thing about being old, and I am very old, is that we remember when it was worse. We can all see how bonkers [patriarchy] is and that’s why we need to work together. We each have something to bring. I’ll bring hope. You bring anger. And there’s no stopping us.”

Left to right: Jan Borowy Cavalluzo, LLP; Shelly Gordon, and Manager of Consent Comes First, Ryerson University, Farrah Khan.

Outside the auditorium, I asked three wise women, Shelly Gordon, Farrah Khan (also a panelist), and Jan Borowy Cavalluzo why they attended. Gordon remarked, “Gloria still has a lot of advice for how to keep moving social change”. Borowy Cavalluzo said for her, “Gloria has been an inspiration to the feminist movement for decades. Her approach to the intersectional feminist movements is important and I am interested in what she has to say.”

So, while the 84-year-old Steinem may be frail in body, her power to fuel the feminist movement is still robust and relevant as ever.

The post Meeting a Feminist Icon: LiisBeth Publisher PK Mutch on encountering the leading feminist activist of her life 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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