GOVERNMENT BELIEVES SUPPORTING MALE ENTREPRENEURS NOT IMPORTANT

So this week started off looking good for men with the first ever Conference for Men and Boys in Brighton and ended terribly with Norgrove's awful report and then the coup de grace was given by Theresa May (she believes in shared parenting as stated on BBC 1's Question Time) when she anniounced setting up an entrepreneurs fund for women and a Women's Business Council with mentors.

"The £700,000 over three year funding will provide 5,000 mentors for new and existing female entrepreneurs as research shows women are only half as likely as men to be engaged in entrepreneurial activity."

This is significant because of course everyone wants a successful economy and everyone be able to use their potential, whether a man or a woman but the genderisation of entrepreneurship is dangerously sexist. While there has been biased funding before and no doubt this continues, entrepreneurship is gender neutral.

We have argued before that this government endorsed sexism means that female entrepreneurs are not taken seriously because they 'only get their capital because they are female' and also it squeezes the opportunities for young male enrtrepreneurs - as if male entrepreneurs are second class.

This is even more damaging when you see the state of the economy and how desperate we are for unemployed men (currently 1.5 million and a rate of 75.4% as opposed to 1 million and a rate of 65.4% women)to get onto the employment ladder (and women of course).

So why are there are special schemes for female entrepreneurs and why is the government talking them up when the economy needs male and female entrepreneurs. Is May really saying, just like Harman before her, that a Rodean educated woman needs help to be an entrepreneur while a white/black working class boys from a Peckham council estate who went to a sink school doesn't. Its sexist.

This week we have the men being shut out of fatherhood and now we have them being shut on our the economy and being able to create jobs for themselves, their families and others.

Men are being deliberately crushed.

Posted by Skimmington

Comments

[Groan]

It is also bad economics. Research on women in their own businesses shows most create their business to achieve a less stressful life, often to work from home. Some men do too. But what this means is that women led businesses generally remain single traders or very small as the primary aims are not to grow the business beyond easy control by the owner. Male led businesses are very much more likely to expand to include employees and diversification. So if the objective is to increase small businesses achieving better work/life balance then it may help but in terms of increasing employment and production it is another example of "myths and magic medicine". From experience of previous gov initiatives such schemes tend to benefit ex employees of the public/corporate sectors setting up consultant/training enterprises,small shops and freelancers. In the current climate all effort should go into production for export, and for that you need entrepreneurs ready to take big risks and want to expand, It is no accident that countries with no family friendly employment policies have a higher rate of female entrepreneurs (USA) while the reverse is true in Sweden for instance. As summarised by Dr. Hakim women and men generally have different goals and this shows up across the "western world". So not only sexist bit a waste of tax layers money. On the plus side at least it says women need to earn their way our of recession unlike the Fawcett Soc.

[John Kimble]

Excellent article and quite rightly rather popular on Facebook by the look of things.

I missed May's Question Time statements, anyone have the exact quote please?

[Wobs]

This is nothing new. We have had such funds before.

What normally happends is that men get their wives to act as a front for their business to get the funds.

Such schemes are not only sexist and counterproductive, but pointless.