Stop Calling Yourself A Female Founder
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." If female is a biological descriptor and woman a human one, are we not subordinating ourselves to the exact determinism that feminist theory spent decades dismantling?
This piece does not seek to negate the years of work, resilience, and achievement of the women who built under that banner. In many rooms, at many tables, the label was the only way in. This is not about them. It is about whether that door is still the same and whether people who belong in a room need to announce their arrival.
A founder is a founder as simply as an engineer is an engineer. If we aren't determining ourselves as a female [insert any possible occupation here], the need to preface 'founder' with a prefix only reinforces the belief that the default for building is male.
While it's as well-intentioned as it is quietly patronising, how is it that we have not come to collectively understand the exacerbation this gives to the chasm that separates how society expects men and women to behave?
"Femtech", "female founder", "women in business" – the shoe in the door that once pried it open may need to be discarded at the entrance, so we can walk through barefoot with our male compatriots.
We've kicked and screamed to enter the room, and we'd all like to stay.
The persistence of pushback on gender equality may indicate the need to revise the strategy. To be treated as equal to, and indivisible, perhaps we need to identify as such. In this instance, as founder, point-blank.
Yes, in retrospect, the label may have created opportunity and visibility in a world that wore female-facing peripheral visors. Yet if the words of empowerment hold equal weight to reinforcing the hierarchy being fought, would we not be better off dropping the self-proclaimed "handicapped" sign written across our foreheads?
Visibility built on an asterisk is not visibility. It's a footnote and a lifetime reservation at the second table, by the door, with poor service and an unrelenting winter breeze blowing your napkin off your lap every time a new, likely male, guest walks in and gets offered a drink on the house.
Women have forever been relegated to secondary seating in the restaurant. What if, in order to be treated as an equal party, we need not present as a group with allergies and dietaries but in and of the same as those dining among us.
