El País interview with Silvina Moschini

El País, the most read newspaper in Spanish online and "a national newspaper of record" for Spain, published this extensive interview with Silvina Moschini, a co-founder, Chairwoman and President of TransparentBusiness:

(English translation is posted below.)

El País interview with Silvina Moschini

ENTREPRENEURS

Women: Essential to the Recovery of the Economy 
Why women entrepreneurs are the engine of the reactivation of the economy

by Lucia Vera Hervás
Madrid 8 MAR 2021 - 15:13 CET

According to the latest report on Women Entrepreneurs prepared by Mastercard, despite being the most affected, 42% of them have digitized their businesses during the pandemic. In addition, 34% were able to identify new opportunities. From the SMB Territory we wanted to talk with Silvina Moschini, founder and president of TransparentBusiness and CEO and founder of SheWorks! so that she could tell us the key pointss to the role of women in business and what advice she can give to new entrepreneurs.

- How do women entrepreneurs face the crisis?

The pandemic demonstrated the resilience and leadership of women entrepreneurs. Thanks to the explosion of new technologies, women began to make their way into areas that were previously unthinkable for them because they did not have the flexibility they needed to combine their daily lives with their professions.

According to the 2020 Mastercard Women Entrepreneurs index, despite being the most affected, 42% of them digitized their businesses and 34% identified new opportunities. This speaks directly to their response to the crisis because they knew how to reinvent themselves, use new tools and bring out their talent to the world.

But being an entrepreneur requires a great sacrifice, it is necessary to dedicate a lot of effort to start the projects and achieve the objectives that you want to achieve. And the path for women entrepreneurs is undoubtedly much more difficult, but they have to focus on their goals and move on by breaking down barriers.

At SheWorks! We saw this need and will soon launch Skirt The Rulesa global movement of women entrepreneurs to access tools and best practices to help them achieve their business goals and accelerate their growth. We will share tools, techniques and knowledge and thus take business to the next level.

We constantly seek to undertake new actions to support the development of women and their projects. It is a facet that gives me great satisfaction and fills my heart to help other entrepreneurs to boost their businesses.

- Do you think that a woman knows how to adapt better than a man to situations like the one we are experiencing? Why?

We are facing a total change of paradigms in which little by little we are adapting to new ways of facing the processes. In fact, those who best led during the pandemic were heads of state. The reason is that they prioritized empathic leadership, with emotional intelligence, prioritizing teamwork. Inclusive leadership is the one that today is best armed to be able to succeed and have better results. And inclusive leadership has the energy of a woman.

In this new scenario that we are going through, technology has become the ally of women, since it has allowed them to expand their job opportunities and has opened the doors to create successful companies.

Technology became the great equalizer of opportunities and democratizes access to work, because people can show themselves to the world by how they work and not by who they are.

However, technological advances have not yet made it possible to close the gender gap that exists in most countries. Women face great challenges in a market in which there is still enormous inequality of opportunities.

Digitizing processes in companies allows creating and managing talent clouds with people from all over and making occupations more flexible. This will give more opportunities to mothers who must leave their jobs to dedicate themselves to raising their children.

We must not lose sight of the fact that currently, more than half of women abandon their jobs when they become mothers because they cannot reconcile their work and personal life due to rigid models that currently associate work with a place to which they go and not something that is done.

- What are the main difficulties faced by women when starting a business? Are they the same as men? What is the difference between them?

We live in a world where there is a marked inequality of opportunities between men and women. According to information from the World Bank, in the world, only 1 in 3 companies is owned by women. Despite the fact that women make up 51% of the Spanish population, they only represent 19% of all entrepreneurs in Spain, according to the Entrepreneurship Map of the Madrid City Council. In Latin America, for example, the labor participation gap between women and men is more than 26 percentage points

Obviously there are more difficulties for women than for men, because women are considered based on evidence and not on potential, for which we have to work much harder so that by dint of demonstration, we have better and greater considerations for access leadership positions in different organizations.

To understand the scenario that women entrepreneurs go through, it is enough to know some figures: only 2% of venture capital is invested in women entrepreneurs. As a woman, the biggest challenge that one has as an entrepreneur is to invest in your company, because the perception regarding the world of entrepreneurs is that small-scale projects are carried out.

Financing women is synonymous with greater economic development: a study by the Boston Consulting Group reveals that supporting women entrepreneurs would contribute up to $ 5 trillion to the economy (between 3 and 6% of global GDP).

The current scenario begins to show us that many women are encouraging themselves to undertake because technology allows them to create exponential businesses, surrounding themselves with the best available talent, no matter where they are and with very little initial investment.

I think it is time to see successful women normalize, who are comfortable being strong and who do not feel that they have to apologize for their achievements.

-What advice would you give to a woman who is thinking of starting her own business?

This month within the framework of International Women's Day I am launching a global movement for entrepreneurs called Skirt The Rules that I developed to precisely provide advice to women entrepreneurs and help them achieve their business goals and accelerate their growth.

Among them, it is to find a cause that they are passionate about, because undertaking is precisely transforming that passion into an idea of impact. In my case, SheWorks! It was born as a solution to provide flexible work opportunities for millions of women: this is the engine of my business and of my day-to-day life as an entrepreneur.

It is also important that women believe in their inner strength and trust in their talent. Overcome the impostor syndrome, when you believe that you are not worthy of your achievements. Think big, learn to ask and negotiate.

It is also very important to work on the personal brand, understand what your business is, what your vision is and how you are going to articulate and create your own story. With a true message, and through the right channels, your personal brand is sure to have an impact. And, if you do, you are going to be successful.