Growing up I was raised by a resourceful and business minded set of parents. My father despite his day job as an architect still worked the garden after-hours and would sell his produce over the weekends at the local market. That was the money he would spend on household costs and save up his salary, while my mom was a teacher but also made and sold traditional butters and sauces.
While my parents were quite savvy with financial literacy they were not able to leverage on their businesses due to lack of entrepreneurship literacy, more so my mother because the entrepreneurship discourse on both social and political levels has been non-inclusive towards women.
This has created a stigma that women aren’t ready to discuss business matters let alone be successful businesswomen. At the recent G20 summit gathering in Osaka a few weeks ago, out of the 38 world economic leaders at the meeting only three were women. Entrepreneurship has acquired a special main role in an economic and political scenario marked by the economic crisis. While this is true, it is important to note that as long as women are excluded from this conversation the economic crisis will be perpetuated. 51% of the world population are women meaning they constitute the majority of the market, while 40% of the world households have female breadwinners. When it comes to female breadwinners, it’s not always the case that they earn more than their partners. While 37 % of female breadwinners out-earn their partners, in 63 % of cases they were single mothers, so they are the primary and only breadwinner. It’s an important distinction, though in both cases the women are still taking on the financial responsibility.
Not to bore you with technicalities, but I am happy to be part of the solution. Having joined the Good Women Good Business Team, I am happy that women are beginning to take a step in the right direction on their own terms. Good Women Good Business Venture Capital Fund is the brainchild of Ujama Sandra Mushimba a serial entrepreneur in her own right who made a decision to venture in the start-up funding space after noticing a blind eye to the entrepreneurial space by traditional financiers particularly in Namibia. GWGB is mainly focused on providing funding alternatives to women entrepreneurs coupled with mentoring, training and transfer of high level engagement skills required to develop start-ups into sustainable businesses.
My role at GWGB is to translate the vision of the team towards enabling purpose and unlocking the power of women in the entrepreneurial space. I always look back at my mom’s business ventures along with my aunt’s side hustles that really helped us growing up but could have been bigger legacies if these women had access to information the same way their male counterparts had. So, I was uber excited when I got the opportunity to write for Monochrome, as this would extend my voice as a communicate and my arm as a helper. I look forward to write articles to help women in business or women chasing after their careers on financial literacy, business survival hacks and hopefully see more women secure their bags the right way.
- Davis Wamambo | Good Women Good Business