To start Women's Month, Renoon founder Iris Skrami shares her thoughts about inpriring women and female entrepreneurship.
Prospective female entrepreneurs should be aware of something I wish I knew when I began my career which is that entrepreneurship is an actual career choice that empowers you to be creative and rapidly build up your skills. Currently, there is an imbalance in the number of startups and companies being managed and co-founded by women, which I wasn't aware of before starting. Women-founded startups raised 1.9% of all venture capital funds in 2022, a drop from the previous year. However, this should not discourage you in any shape or form, nor make you believe things should be any different for you. I found this a motivation to push even harder because there is every reason to believe that reality will be equal tomorrow if we work to make it happen. The biggest challenge that women entrepreneurs face is the bias and narratives we've all built about the role of women, starting within ourselves. I recently got asked, "what my plans in my personal life are". I was about to answer that, but then I realized: that's not a question men get asked! That's a totally legit question to ask, so why not ask this to men, too? Or stop asking women. So, I made the journalist aware of this and we both had a laugh and agreed we have got work to do in making everyday conscious understanding of these biases, that are engraved in all of us, whether we realize it or not. To be a good female leader you have to just be yourself. Just be the natural leader you are and built up your skills. No need to be a "female" leader. A woman that inspires me to maintain balance in my life and how is myself. I always listen to myself. There are evenings in which I could be working on and on and on. And other times when I need my break. The women who changed my life are again myself, my mum for bringing me to life and raising me for who I am, and my sister for being my biggest rock. As women, we do not need "saving" or our lives to "be changed" by anyone else than ourselves. The one thing I would like to say to every woman is that we are in charge of what we think, do, and make happen.
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