A diverse and inclusive enterprise thrives. Speaking of inclusiveness, Yemani Mason talks about having the back of women entrepreneurs and empowering them to make meaningful contributions. Let’s delve.
Being inclusive breaks limitations.
Yemani’s years’ worth of experience as an entrepreneur and building companies from scratch to success has taught her a crucial lesson – “A company that embraces diversity and inclusiveness only gets stronger and better by the minute.”
As a part of this philosophy, empowering and supporting women entrepreneurs is essential to the ability of a business to meet the needs of its clients, employees, and other stakeholders. Yemani shares, “Women play a pivotal role in advancing not just growing businesses but thriving economies.”
Yemani further states that women’s empowerment lies at the heart of business progress. It’s because a collaborative effort of women and men together leads to an acceleration of the achievement of business goals.
By collaborative Yemani means that there is no ‘friction’ of any sort – neither internal nor external – paving the way for smooth functioning. Yemani aims to inspire women entrepreneurs to take up the cudgels to support each other and break free from the clutches of restrictive belief patterns, societal conditioning, and religious dogma.
All of these blockades combined have, by tradition, kept women suppressed, rendering them unable to reach their full potential. It’s time to change this on a systemic level.
Another thing that Yemani has observed which gets in the way of women empowerment is the fact that female entrepreneurs often don’t get equal access (as men) to financial and human capital. It not only impedes the growth of women entrepreneurs but the business as a whole.
Such prejudice against women entrepreneurs fueled by mindset constraints is a massive roadblock to business progress.
Besides, the culturally imposed restraints upon women hinder their liberty, ambitions, and priorities, thus holding them back from giving their inputs and contributing to the company’s growth.
The success of women entrepreneurs and consequently the business depends on how supportive and prejudice-free the company is towards its women entrepreneurs.
Ask Yemani how to overcome the disparity against women entrepreneurs and she says, “Existing women’s empowerment interventions are not sufficient to triumph over all barriers women entrepreneurs are facing.
We need efficient, successful interventions of a transformative nature to move beyond resolving fundamental issues and tackle all kinds of psychological, social, and religious constraints imposed on women entrepreneurs. That’s when real growth will happen and how!”
