We need to support more female entrepreneurs, in this sense ICON CUBE StartUp have been doing a great work to support women initiatives, more recently, through the first Iberoamerican Transversal Awards, Go Health Awards (www.gohealthawards.com), receiving hundreds of women candidacies, 72%.
While just 15-20 per cent of single-person businesses (in average) were owned and run by women in 2014, 62 per cent of businesses funded by ICON CUBE StartUp are run by women, something we’re very proud of.
Women make up half of the world, they should also make up half of the business world. On International Women’s Day, we wanted to share our progress in this area. To celebrate our amazing female entrepreneurs event, we counted with the collaboration of iBWomen (www.ibwomen.org), in concrete to the always generous support offered by @Myriam Isabel González Navarro, Secretary General and founding partner. Maria Jesús Alonso, President at IBWomen, took the audience through the multiple goals of the non-profit association and gave a special award to Inés Juste, president of Grupo Juste (www.grupojuste.com). Inés, at the reins of the family group, shared experiences and enthusiasm of their global entrepreneurial experience and success to an audience of +400 attendees.
ICON CUBE StarUp, through the GoHA Health Awards, is attempting to tackle some of the glass ceilings that still exist in this space through events like these, and by sharing the inspiring stories of these female entrepreneurs. We spoke to many other women who of Frugl, Suzanne Noble, about how we can combat the biases still present against women in tech, and the founder of network Talented Ladies Club, about ways we can get more women into business and support their entrepreneurial activities.
Female founders have a need for better support networks and mentoring for female entrepreneurs, there is still experience discrimination and feel that confidence and fear of failure are issues that stop more women starting up.
ICON CUBE StartUp has started to adapt how they deliver their services, to encourage greater female participation, including running masterclasses for mumpreneurs mid-morning, rather than in the evening and holding specific networking events for female founders.
All this work is having an impact and helping us to edge closer to the goal of equal gender participation in entrepreneurship. All the start-ups we’ve funded since the beginning of the programme, 57 per cent have female founders. ICON CUBE StartUp is forward to seeing that number continue to rise in 2018.
