Challenges Women Face During Their Entrepreneurial Journey
It is well said the journey to a thousand miles starts with a single step but the case is not similar for women entrepreneurs. They have always faced challenges to take the first step towards entrepreneurship and that has been very different from those experienced by men in the same field. In contempt of many stabilized efforts have been made over past years to close the gender gap, still, the advancement is not up to the mark.
What causes such differences, even in the current era?
Though the beginning is always tough, indeed, the entrepreneurial journey for a woman is never the same as that of men. The causes of business disruption are blamed for a set of reasons that we are going to share in the article further. Read on to know the challenges in detail!
1. Resisting Social Expectations
The female business owners may feel the need to adopting a clichéd male attitude towards their business. This comes due to the unsettled behavior of society towards women entrepreneurs talking about business with male executives.
In such cases, women start feeling that they should adopt the qualities of competitiveness and aggressiveness for success. However, this is not true! There are real examples of those who remained true to themselves and found their voice for rising above distorted prospects.
2. Funding Access
The start-ups who need to look for the investors for their business very well know the tough phase of pitching them. It is even tougher for women entrepreneurs! Since funding is a crucial part of setting a business, it is a common challenge women face during their journey of setting up a business.
Studies have proven that women business owners face a lot of issues in getting business funding access as compared to men. As a result, investors provide funding at lower rates than desired.
3. Balancing the business and family life together
As modern women are capable enough to handle both personal and professional like a pro, it is still a challenge for many. They have to face the dual responsibility of giving equal time to both family and business to maintain a work-life balance.
Women are expected to play as a leading part of handling the household chores and taking care of the family. This becomes a major challenge for them as they have to invest both time and energy into their family and making a balance becomes difficult.
4. Getting a support system
A business entrepreneur always needs a potent support network for success and the same rule applies to women entrepreneurs as well. Initially, while setting up an entrepreneurial investment, the support act as a confidence booster and helps in professional growth too.
Unfortunately, women feel a lack of available mentors to get guidance in their journey. Managing their business without any advisors or supporters becomes a more difficult task then. It can be believed that the majority and dominance of men in the high-level business rise challenge for women to run their business.
5. Dealing with failure
While entering in any business or planning for becoming an entrepreneur, you should prepare that not every phase will be cool as a breeze. Failure is a very real probability in every business venture and a very common challenge women face during their ride to being an entrepreneur.
As a consequence of this, the insecurity of women doesn’t let them dream big and they remain in self-doubt as an entrepreneur. The fear of failure is a tough challenge to face and make women lose sight of their ultimate destination.
