There is much that philanthropy can do to strengthen and grow feminist businesses and social enterprises, writes Canadian Women’s Foundation’s Andrea Gunraj.
I visited the Toronto Women’s Bookstore just about every week in my early 20s. I was drawn to its book displays and array of zines, pop art, greeting cards, buttons, T-shirts, and magnets you couldn’t find anywhere else in the city. I attended after-hours readings and shows at the store, too, a duplex on Harbord Street that often doubled as event space.
One weekend, my sister attended a skill-building workshop for aspiring racialized feminist writers there. She scribbled notes for me, knowing how much I wanted to be a writer, knowing how valuable and rare the intel was.
Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Zadie Smith, Naomi Klein. Books I bought by these authors, so difficult to locate in chain bookstores, were nothing less than a revelation, a healing balm, and a lit ember to me.
Roots of the Toronto Women’s Bookstore go back to the 1970s, not unlike the women’s bookstores in Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, and other cities. From credit unions to caterers to digital studios, feminist businesses have existed in Canada from since at least the 1960s. Take Bloom + Brillance, an intersectional and Indigenous feminist-led design agency in Winnipeg. Take Aisle, one of the first companies in the world to bring reusable period products to the masses. These are just two examples of feminist businesses led by diverse entrepreneurs today.
Feminist businesses represent a response to traditional business practices that have evolved around the vision of a white male businessman, upheld by poorly compensated women haunting his background.
Behind every successful man . . .
These days, a lot of people question this outdated scheme of employment and capitalist success. It was always limiting and inaccurate. Deepest questioning tends to be done by workers traditionally marginalized in our economy. They include newcomers with unrecognized credentials and Indigenous, Black, and racialized women who face greater pay gaps and barriers to leadership. They include mothers and caregivers who can’t get the workplace flexibility they need and 2SLGBTQIA+ people pushed into the closet at work.
They include feminists, who always ask why we do things the way we do them.
Representation matters, but increased feminist entrepreneurship moves beyond numerics.
The contemporary growth of diverse women entrepreneurs and women in business leadership has been nothing short of inspiring. But make no mistake: this is not one and the same with the growth of feminist entrepreneurship. Representation matters, but increased feminist entrepreneurship moves beyond numerics, beyond seeing is believing, beyond passing through once-barricaded doors to take a place at the table.
Feminist entrepreneurship and business is a distinct way of working. It’s setting up work conditions to push back on business practices that marginalize diverse women and equity-seeking workers. It’s using collective models, inclusive models, and intersectional models of doing business.
It’s feminist social enterprises that employ those who are underemployed, under-supported, and underseen.
It’s business grounded in diversity, equity, and inclusion practices that aren’t just “nice to have” when it’s convenient and benign but ultimately immaterial to success.
It’s profit for human and environmental benefit.
No surprise, then, that women and Two Spirit, trans, and nonbinary people gravitate to this kind of entrepreneurship. It’s a matter of practicality as much as it is altruism. Many women and gender-diverse people aren’t interested in replicating models that hold them back. They want to be part of the solution.
If the promises of feminist entrepreneurship are legion, why aren’t there more feminist businesses in Canada? Our entrepreneurial ecosystem is not a friendly space for it to thrive. There aren’t enough government supports for feminist entrepreneurs. Programs designed to boost women entrepreneurs are usually agnostic about business models themselves. They operate at the level of greater representation, not at the level of transformation. Feminist business models aren’t acknowledged in these programs, let alone nurtured.
Feminist entrepreneurs get missed in our economic analyses, too. Bodies tasked with data collection, including Statistics Canada; Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; and the Business Development Bank of Canada, don’t employ feminist-focused approaches in their studies related to women and diverse entrepreneurs.
Things that don’t get researched don’t get the benefits of policy improvement and investment.
The result is neglect: things that don’t get researched don’t get the benefits of policy improvement and investment.
On top of that, feminist entrepreneurs miss out on venture capital, loans, investment, and grants. Overall, women launch businesses with 53% less capital than men. They’d take the capital if they could get it, but they don’t get it nearly as much as men. Sexism and other biases in Canada’s financial institutions are certainly part of the problem. But there’s also a general lack of recognition for the feminist innovations women and gender-diverse people most often activate in their businesses.
Behind every successful man . . .
Philanthropy can help debunk the old ways of doing things and fill our gaps in imagination.
Philanthropy can use its clout to help Canada conceptualize and research feminist entrepreneurial success.
Philanthropy can fund efforts to bolster feminist businesses and social enterprises, including the profit-for-good enterprises operated by charities. It can fuel disaggregated economic data collection about feminist business that isn’t collected elsewhere. It can insist on accessing the services of feminist businesses in its own supply chains.
Philanthropy can use its clout to help Canada conceptualize and research feminist entrepreneurial success. To teach it in business school. To reward feminist innovators across all sectors of the economy, not just male-dominated sectors like sports, science, and tech.
Philanthropy can strengthen our entrepreneurial ecosystem with the goal of growing feminist businesses, not simply women in business.
The Canadian Women’s Foundation is taking steps by grantmaking toward feminist entrepreneurship, filling research gaps, and offering support and resources.
But there’s so much more philanthropy as a powered sector can do to grow feminist business approaches and make feminist entrepreneurship the norm it deserves to be.
