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There are nowhere near enough female-founded businesses - we need to teach school girls that it is good to be 'bossy'

Chief Secretary to The Treasury Liz Truss held a meeting with female founders at Number 11 Dowing Street recently
Chief Secretary to The Treasury Liz Truss held a meeting with female founders at Number 11 Dowing Street recently

Welcome to Refresh – a series of comment pieces by young people, for young people,  to provide a free-market response to Britain's biggest issues ​

Earlier on this month the Telegraph shed light on the fact that female-only founder teams secured just 1.6pc of the total funding to start ups - just over 1p in every £1.

It made the front page of the Telegraph. but are we really that gob-smacked? We know women, on average, aren’t as confident to set up their own businesses.

We know they don’t study the right subjects at a high enough level to enable them to have the skills to set up businesses with a high ROI. But we need to have an honest conversation if we want women – and society – to make a step forward.

So why don’t women set up their own businesses. Is it a lack of female VCs? Is it because accelerators are sexist? Could VCs be more accommodating to women? Yes it’s all that. But the root of the issue is in schooling, nursery, and unconscious bias in parenting.

Blaming VCs, male entrepreneurs and whoever else is like sticking a plaster on a very deep cut that'll just cover the problem but never heal it.

We need to look at why there are less female founded businesses for a start and to do this changes need to be made from the way girls are parented and treated at schools.

I was called bossy throughout my education, and constantly told to stop the endless questioning 'don't worry about it', 'it doesn’t matter', 'it's not something you need to know' but it turns out that bossiness and constant questioning the systems around me where vital skills needed in founding my business and dealing with everything that came with it.

The same logic can be applied to the gender pay gap. There’s no point in blaming companies. They are the last culprits in the chain – again it starts with schooling and parenting. Why aren’t more women encouraged to do maths? Why aren’t they told more that a woman’s role isn’t necessarily in the home, it can be in the office.

Women do not take the risks men do, they doubt themselves more and have imposter syndrome considerably more than men. These are facts and the question of why this is the case is the root cause of why there are less female founded businesses being launched, why VCs are not investing in female run businesses more and why there aren’t more female CEOs?

If school girls were taught to question the world, to believe in themselves, taught self esteem, that they can be whatever they want to be, that bossy is just showing leadership skills, then maybe these girls will be the ones getting out there launching their own businesses the way men do and increasing the statistics of more funding into female founded businesses.

Confidence also comes from within, and as Liz Truss said the other week when she quoted Little Mix: ‘I put my own rock on my hand’.

Be the CEO that your parents always wanted you to marry.

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