Book Review
In her brand new book, Launching While Female: Smashing the System That Holds Women Entrepreneurs Back, journalist and professor Susanne Althoff investigates the obstacles women and nonbinary entrepreneurs - especially those of colour - face when launching, funding, and growing their companies, obstacles that persist because the current start-up world was engineered by and for white men. An exposé of the gender gap in entrepreneurship and a road map for a more inclusive and economically successful future for us all.
Through interviews with over a hundred founders across the country and in all industries for her book Launching While Female: Smashing the System That Holds Women Entrepreneurs Back, Susanne Althoff paints a picture of an entrepreneurial system rife with bias and discrimination, where women receive less than 3 percent of this country's venture capital, struggle to find mentors in the wake of #MeToo, and are dismissed as “mompreneurs." The effects of this unequal system - a weaker economy, fewer jobs, less innovation - are felt by all of us, and Susanne explains how more equitable structures in business and entrepreneurship will benefit all people, not just those hoping to fund a startup.
By exploring some of the practical ways we can open the entrepreneurial system to everyone, Susanne provides a rallying cry and a way forward for women entrepreneurs and their allies, showing that change is urgent and within our reach. The book covers such as: Entrepreneurship’s Meritocracy Myth: How we all lose out; Centuries of Second-Class Status: Early women entrepreneurs; The Boys’ Club: Today’s complicated hunt for funding; You Can’t Be What You Can’t See: The power of role models; Sleazy Texts, Late-Night Meetings: A #MeToo reckoning; The Big Effect of Little Insults: The microaggression problem; Owning the Room: How confidence is found (and faked); A Shoulder to Lean On: The search for mentors and support; and Entrepreneurship’s Potential: Making it work for everyone.
Author quotes
Launching While Female is an exposé of the gender gap in entrepreneurship and a road map for a more inclusive and economically successful future for us all.
Based on my interviews with 100 women entrepreneurs, as well as nonbinary founders, Launching While Female examines the hurdles they face and proposes ways to make the entrepreneurial space more inclusive and equitable.
Entrepreneurship’s meritocracy myth is a problem for everyone. It’s time to fix it.
About the author
Susanne Althoff is a veteran journalist and an assistant professor at Emerson College in Boston, where she teaches publishing entrepreneurship and women's media. She's also served as advisor to women-led start-ups. Before joining Emerson in 2015, she worked for 22 years as a magazine editor, including 6 years as the editor in chief of the Boston Globe Magazine. Her writing has appeared in WIRED, the Boston Globe, and other publications.
Why LoA loves it….
The gender gap in entrepreneurship is real, and every day women entrepreneurs from across the world, and particularly on the African continent, are battling everything from equitable access to finding, through to access to new market opportunities. Change needs to happen, and Susanne’s new book is a catalyst to get people listening in the first instance, followed by getting them talking, and ending in getting things done differently. Giving women entrepreneurs the opportunity to share their experiences and learnings, it means we are all passing the baton to the next generation who will follow in our footsteps and be the change the world needs in business and society. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo of Lionesses of Africa