Every year BRW, the weekly business magazine which will no longer be printed, publishes a Young Rich issue. It lists the 100 wealthiest self-made Australian business people under the age of 40.
Reading through the list for 2013, one thing that might strike you is the distinct lack of female entrepreneurs. Out of one hundred entries, only seven women featured:
Out of those seven, two are models (Erica Baxter and Miranda Kerr) and one is a sportswoman (Kerrie Webb), two professions that can benefit from, but don’t rely on, entrepreneurial skills.
Two of the entries appear alongside a male counterpart and one looks to be the founder’s partner (Lilly Haikin) rather than a founder herself.
This leaves three female entrepreneurs on the list – Carolyn Creswell (Carman’s), Tammy May (My Budget) and Karen Cariss (PageUp People – she appears on the list with Simon Cariss, however she is the CEO while he is a senior vice president).
Three female entrepreneurs. Out of one hundred. Why is there such an imbalance, when females have worked so hard for so many years to be recognised in business?
It’s not a big stretch to propose that females aren’t encouraged in business in the same way males are. Over and over I have seen an attitude – whether it’s overt or more subtle – in men that women in business aren’t to be taken seriously. They’re just playing business, trying to be like men, wasting time until it’s time to have babies.
They couldn’t possibly be interested in, or have the skills to, run an actual business.
It might be partly because of this attitude and partly due to a societal issue that women are plagued with more self-doubt than men. Females are told from a young age to act and look a certain way in order to be more “likeable”, which has traditionally been the highest honour that can be awarded to a female. There is a narrow view of what a female is supposed to be and if she doesn’t fit this mold she is, more or less, a pariah.
Criticism is part of the game in business but females take it to heart – they listen to friends and family who try to talk them out of taking risks. They hear that they’re not good enough, and they believe it, whereas males might brush it off or use it as motivation to prove that person wrong.
A female in a position of power or in the limelight is always open to more criticism than a male – criticism of the way she looks, how she acts, what she wears, who she marries or doesn’t marry, whether she chooses to have children and how she raises them if she does.
According to the Australian Small Business Key Statistics and Analysis of 2012, half as many female-run businesses, compared to those run by men, state a preference for maximum growth over keeping the firm small and manageable. Is this because those females are scared to take centre-stage, to have the spotlight thrust on them? Because then they are open to criticism and the possibility of not being liked?
The tendency for females to want to be liked above all else might be the very thing holding them back from stronger representation in business. You can’t run a multi-million dollar company by being a pushover. It takes a thick skin. It requires making tough decisions and sticking to your guns, despite how others might perceive that.
We have great role models in Carolyn Creswell, Tammy May and Karen Cariss, proving that women can be responsible for building and running hugely successful enterprises. But before that can happen in greater number there needs to be a shift – in how females present themselves in business, how far they’re willing to go to be successful and also in how they are treated and the opportunities they are given in business.
Until that occurs, we can expect to continue to see a major imbalance between males and females appearing on any list of the most successful entrepreneurs. What do you think? Why are there so few females represented on the BRW Young Rich List?