EMPOWERING WOMEN IN FINANCE
Julie Lake, CEO & Co-Founder, The FinTech50, has a thought provoking take on women in the financial sector, where the ‘equal to’ sign means much more than just two horizontal parallel lines.
A few years ago, we ran an event in London that showcased ten FinTech businesses of the future. FinTech was hot then, as it is now, and it drew in a huge crowd. Over networking drinks, we floated the idea of creating a similar event where we would give the stage exclusively to women entrepreneurs. One senior executive listened closely, and then asked, “Great idea – but will you find enough of them?”
Yes! We would. If we wanted to run a showcase for women FinTech entrepreneurs, we could do so in a heartbeat. Not only would we find enough, we would also find market leading women founders, whose businesses an audience would want to engage with – that too, without the additional label.
Fast forward to now, where women founders and leaders are being rightly recognised and celebrated – on stage, in boardrooms, on programmes etc. However, their presence is often promoted as if they, the organisers, have done a great job while being so inclusive. Just this year I was approached to take part in a prestigious project because they needed another woman!
Thank you.
While women are creating and leading businesses with relentless regularity, securing VC investment can remain a challenge. But even here, there are encouraging signs of change. In the UK, FinTech businesses with a female founder raised £226.9m in 2017, up from just £3.4m in 2013. In India, one fund has seen 100% growth in women funded start-ups from a year-ago, with one-fifth of the companies that the platform has funded in the last 12 months, having women founders or co-founders.
Why does this matter in the grand scheme of things? I work in this sector, FinTech, because innovation here has a big picture opportunity to transform lives around the world, through improved access to better financial services. The case for women’s financial empowerment is well established in terms of its macro impact on economies, and its positive effect on individual women and families. Better provision of financial services to women, and better representation of women in firms that provide financial services are not separate things. They are highly interconnected and every millimetre of success achieved along the way matters.
One tech giant who co-founded a household name financial service, said, “If we want to have more women in tech it is not enough to get more women engineers and executives—we also need more women founders, because it is the founders of companies that set the cultural tone.”
The tone is definitely being set. By all means champion and celebrate women’s achievements as innovators, leaders, creators of change and all round inspirational beings, but let’s dispense with the trophy factor. This is not an anomaly. Once the world acclimatizes, and its collective vision adjusts to the reality where women getting on with doing all of this is simply the norm, we may also achieve something else – the right to be less than super human in business – or even to fail. That really will be equality, IMHO. (in my humble opinion)
