Selene in Manitoba can’t access a wage support program because she doesn’t already have an employee, but she also can’t scale up her business until she has the funds to hire an employee: “I’ll take fewer risks than men not because I’m scared, but because I’m not reckless with my family’s survival,” she says.
Amara, running a successful software company in Northern Ontario, faces repeated challenges to her legitimacy as a business because she doesn’t operate a storefront in her city’s business centre: “If they can’t categorize it, they assume it’s not legitimate,” she tells us.
On the West Coast, Keira, an Indigenous educator and facilitator in British Columbia spends more time dealing with miscommunication and inconsistency in program requirements and forms than the work she loves doing for community: “I’ve called three different people and gotten three different answers,” she says.
Also in B.C., Nia, a successful Indigenous jeweller, is too big for her current production space but too small for what is available locally to accommodate her vision for growth: “There is no step between my shop and an industrial space,” she tells us.
These stories are not uncommon. PARO recently heard from more than 1,000 women entrepreneurs in Canada through more than 60 regional sessions, two national surveys and multiple expert interviews, and problematic patterns quickly became clear.
Four key challenges emerged across the country: women entrepreneurs in Canada experience misaligned money, exhausting systems, questions about legitimacy and ill-fitting infrastructure that combined, continue to impede their growth and success.
What we also found is that across Canada, women are starting and running businesses successfully despite operating in an economic environment that is not designed for women.
Federal, provincial and regional governments promote entrepreneurship as a pathway to empowerment for women, a pathway to independence and innovation, and yet it became clear governments perpetually ignore the limits on growth created by structural and program barriers that exclude women-made and run businesses.
Our recent report, Collaboration for Transformation: A Systems-change Report on Women’s Entrepreneurship in Canada, found that for Canadian women, their daily reality as entrepreneurs is shaped as much by friction as by opportunity.
First, the design of financial support is out of step with how women and gender-diverse entrepreneurs build, sustain and grow their businesses.
Often grants require matching funds women do not have. Or they are offered loan-heavy support that feels risky in a political climate that changes almost daily. Many tools are geared for early start-ups or large-scale operations, leaving those in the middle with little to support their next steps.
Women entrepreneurs are also paying a legitimacy tax their male colleagues do not have to pay.
Having to prove your business is real, viable and successful is tiring. Even more frustrating is having to re-explain your business model or shoehorn your vision into categories that simply don’t fit drains time, capital and momentum.
Non-traditional business models created most often by women are seen as marginal, because they lack a downtown office, obvious staff or a tech team. Revenue and scale do not appear to count. Many women are also forced to rely on personal savings or incur debt because funding programs don’t reflect their business stage, sector or scale.
Perhaps the biggest barriers come from bureaucratic complexity. In our research, we found the business infrastructure in Canada is fragmented, unstable and opaque, and most often signified by an absence of communication, frequently shifting rules and unexpected or hidden eligibility requirements.
All of these factors create enormous friction, fear and frustration. If you are an entrepreneur who is racialized, Indigenous, immigrant, disabled and/or rural, you will experience all of these barriers more intensely.
Economic growth benefits everyone. Information gaps, though, undermine success. Our research found that women often only learn about funding programs through peers rather than through the institutions offering them, signaling a serious outreach failure.
The good news is that many of the issues identified can be dealt with through system reform. But governments, in partnership with women-owned/run businesses, must have the will for change.
Positive essential changes include one-stop compliance portals, plain-language guidance, legitimacy audits for programs, low-barrier procurement streams and the tracking of administrative burden on entrepreneurs. These are all feasible and could be implemented almost immediately.
Bigger issues, however, are more sticky: we must also address the inequities that limit access, progress and success for women building businesses in Canada. That means accessible and timely childcare, healthcare and elder care, for example – all areas Canadian regions must actively improve.
Ignoring what women in business have been successfully achieving already, and excluding them from entrepreneurial programs that can help scale their business achievements, weakens Canada’s economy. In our pursuit of new trade relationships and greater investment in business infrastructure, Canadian governments must focus on reforms that help women in business too.
Rosalind Lockyer
