MORE WOMEN IN BUSINESS: A participatory approach to empower women entrepreneurs

It is no exaggeration to say that we are living in an era of emerging startups. However, although women's presence in business has become more prominent, they still experience systemic discrimination in such areas as access to resources or capital. Statistics demonstrate that only 16% of Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises are owned by women (Grekou, Li, & Liu, 2018). Moreover, women often encounter more obstacles in starting and running businesses compared to their male peers (Guzman & Kacperczyk, 2019). One way of closing this gap is empowering women entrepreneurs and offering them solutions specifically catered to their needs. This project is a design-led investigation into empowering women entrepreneurs in Canada using participatory design methodologies to identify their major problems in order to generate appropriate solutions. The research explores the following questions: What are the main difficulties for women entrepreneurs before and after launching their businesses? How can women entrepreneurs be empowered to effectively tackle the underlying problems and continue their businesses with fewer obstacles? In this regard, this research went through needs-finding phases, including resource analysis (articles, interviews, online platforms, podcasts, forums, etc.), deep interviews, and co-creation workshops with generative activities. During the participatory activities, a broad spectrum of people who can be affected by design solutions —women business owners, investors, and mentors— were engaged in order to generate insights on women entrepreneurs’ activities, challenges, and achievements. This project demonstrated that even though women encounter different obstacles due to a variety of factors, accessing mentorship and connection to the right community is a frequent request among women. This can have an enormous impact on the success of their ventures. Furthermore, the investigation revealed that, by and large, entrepreneurs struggle with finding available resources or have no idea what already exists — which consequently imposes financial and time costs. To discuss the identified needs and offer feasible solutions, ideation sessions were organized with creative thinkers, entrepreneurs, and mentors. Reaching out to the target group for this research was challenging, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring a tailored strategic approach fitting the new situation. The research uncovered two potential opportunities. First, a space for women entrepreneurs to connect with other entrepreneurs, share their experiences and ask and answer questions. And second, a space to refer to and share entrepreneurship resources. In this regard, an interactive and collaborative platform is offered to facilitate communications between entrepreneurs along with a library of entrepreneurship resources accessible to beginners and experienced entrepreneurs alike.