The pandemic recession was not ‘gender neutral,’ so to “avoid history repeating itself and women’s progress stagnating once again,” we need to tool up the next generation, Gen Z, to not only enter and stay in the job market, but also to dismantle the inequitable gender roles that are replicated at home—and were the cause of more women than men having to leave the work world to take on household child care.
The question of how we successfully do this was posed at the recent Young Enterprise Future Female Founders event. The article gives the collective answer of the panelists as: “we have to shift perceptions.”
According to the Alison Rose Review, “only one in three of the UK’s entrepreneurs are women.” Individual panelists had the following to say:
- “Dragons Den panelist Sara Davies MBE explored these challenges and provided key insights on the importance of harnessing opportunities by instilling the idea of entrepreneurship from a young age: “I found that for me, it was overcoming those barriers or having the self-confidence to think that I can just go for it.”
- Izzy Obeng, founder and director of the future founders coaching community, Foundervine, “explained how the pandemic has provided an opportunity to critically assess the ways that businesses are run and how they can support communities, and young people.”
During the event, the audience was surveyed “to suggest words that represent the one thing that would make the difference to unleashing the potential of future female founders. The running theme was confidence.”
Young Enterprises, the UK Org that provides financial and entrepreneurial education for youth, which hosted the gathering, “has helped more than four million school-aged children to develop enterprise, employability and financial education skills, as well as confidence.”
It’s time for us all to raise the children of the future, without the gender roles of the past, in order to make it sustainable for all of us.
Read the OpenAccessGovernment article here.
