Women Helping Women
Together is better than alone!
Together is better than alone!
The
power of community hasn’t always been clear to me. To this day, my
parents like to tease me about how I was held back in kindergarten
because I failed the sharing portion of the “curriculum” (I’m an only
child, so cut me a tiny bit of slack here!).
In
high school, I started to realize the power of the pack when I started
my first business with my best friend. Party Professionals served food
and cleaned up after our parents’ parties and got new “clients” through
their friends. When it came to making a few extra bucks, we discovered
that your network alone wasn’t as powerful as our combined network.
It’s
been in recent years that I’ve come to realize the real power of the
combined voice of women and the importance of helping and lifting your
community. It’s everything from telling women’s success stories so that
girls can #SEEHER to banding together to make collective impact like so
many Women’s Marches have done in the past couple of years.
Among
all the women I talk to, the overall sentiment is that the energy of
women helping other women is at an all-time high. We’re in a moment
where women are less competitive and more willing to help each other
succeed. We’re all starting to understand that lifting each other up
doesn’t mean you put yourself down.
Research
backs it up, too: In a recent poll by Berlin Cameron and Ellevate
Networks, an overwhelming 79% of respondents believe that women are
supporting women now more than ever before. In another study by Berlin
Cameron and Refinery29 called "This is Women’s Work: Stepping Up Startup
Culture" and which was released at CES, we also found that female-led
startups are two times as likely to turn to crowdfunding as a source of
investment, and that women crave even more networking and mentorship
opportunities with other successful women.
On
the heels of launching LLShe at this year’s CES—a media platform
designed to help women-led businesses founded on the need for more
exposure, support and community for such businesses—I wanted to dig into
the power of community a bit more, so I talked to a handful of female
founders about what community means to them, and how we can use it to
uplift and support other women:
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Mentors are an important part of our successes. According
to the Berlin Cameron and Refinery29 study, 50% of women responded that
they are more comfortable at work when they have a mentor to look up
to. Everyone I spoke to felt the same way. “A community is a group of
people who are active participants in your success, and having a
personal board of advisors in your corner helps you to move faster, make
better decisions and be more confident overall,” says Kristy Wallace,
CEO of Ellevate Network.
We network differently than men—and female connections are our secret weapons. A recent study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
found that high-performing women have one thing in common: they have a
tight-knit circle of other women who help them with “gender-specific
private information and support.” In other words, questions about work
culture, hostility towards women and gender diversity. The study found
that women with a tight female-dominated inner circle had a job
placement level 2.5 times higher than women with a male-dominated inner
circle. It’s more important than ever that we build these important
relationships with other women.
Look outside the usual suspects to make connections. You
may think that you should only network with people within your
industry, but having a diverse group of connections can be rewarding
too. “When women get in front of each other and realize that even if
they’re in different fields they have the same struggles, that’s where
the magic happens,” says fashion designer and co-founder of the Female
Founder Collective Rebecca Minkoff. “Getting advice from someone who
isn’t doing what you’re doing every day can be really helpful.”
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