Women in Business - International Women's Day

Tomorrow is International Women's Day, and for me, that day is about women pushing past what is assumed of them. It's about recognizing their own agency to obtain their goals, whether they want to start a business, pursue a degree, start a family or any combination of goals no one but them could imagine. Part of this agency is women being able to speak on their own experiences and create spaces where we can learn from other women's experiences. In this spirit, I wanted to use this occasion to speak on my experience as one woman who owns a business.

 

I am proud to say that I have independently built Hazelmade over the last 10 years. I am also proud to call Hazelmade a woman-owned business, but at the same time it can be a strange label to occupy. I want to be seen as a business owner, but my gender (and others' reactions to it) can give me experiences that make a distinction based on gender relevant. 

 

I often struggle to comment on my status as a woman business owner because that term is often used to generalize an extremely diverse group of business owners solely based on gender. I am privileged to know a variety of women who own their own businesses, including retail shop owners, financial advisors, teachers and designers. Each woman has their own perfectly valid reason for starting their business. Some want to start a business because it gives them the flexibility to be caretakers, some might want to use their knowledge to help people, while others might be like me, because they simply realized that owning a business was their path in life. They might even start a business as some combination of all of these reasons, or more. The problem lies in assuming that all women start their businesses for the same reason. 

 

Why do we sometimes assume that for all women, owning a business is secondary to some other obligation? For me, starting Hazelmade was a career choice and I could not see myself doing anything else. So, it can be uncomfortable when people meet me and assume that I have Hazelmade as “just a side job” or “just a hobby” because it is my main job, my passion. And, if some women choose to start their business as a side hustle or a deeper dedication to a hobby that they love, they deserve to be seen as legitimate. Assuming that women can only have one type of business hurts all of us. The main difficulty I have in talking about women-owned businesses is that we are a talented, diverse, multifaceted group of people who cannot be adequately described by gender alone. I certainly don't have all the answers; I am just one woman's perspective, but I feel like defining the problem of assumption is an important start.

 

In my experience, it is through conversation and listening that we accurately name difficulties and take the steps to rectify them. This International Women's Day, I would like to call for spaces where people identifying as women can talk and learn from each others' diverse experiences and support each other through the difficulties we face.

 

And, I would like to use my platform to lift up a few of the women in my Northeast Ohio community who own their own businesses. Click the images to see their websites, learn more about the work they are doing, and read the “why” behind their businesses. Tomorrow (and any day, for that matter) is a great day to support women-owned business.