| | MARCH 20209Power Bias: Women are sad-ly under-represented as financial decision-makers. According to Crunchbase, a venture-tracking site, only eight percent of investing partners of the top 100 VC firms were women as of October 2017. Will the increase in the number of women venture capitalists see an increase in funding for women entrepreneurs? Most women entre-preneurs do think so. For example, Rachel Dori, the founder of Dai-ly Harvest, a delivery service for produce-centric meals recalls her struggles with a roomful of poten-tial male investors as if she had no clue what she was talking about. Culture Bias: Most VCs think women are not capable enough to handle a business on their own and hence, women entrepreneurs face condensations and ambiguity when presented with a project proposal. Women entrepreneurs are known to have to go to extreme lengths to get their business on track. For example, Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer, the Co-Founders of Witchsy, an online marketplace for weird art had to introduce an imaginary male Co-Founder Keith to get their business up and running. DareWith changing culture, there are more women entrepreneurs and leaders climbing the corporate ladder. Although, women continue to face numerous challenges, the societal outlook has seen a dras-tic change over the decade. Today, there are more than 10 million businesses owned by women in the US alone and the past decade has seen a 68 percent increase in women entrepreneurship. But how do these women handle the varied bias targeting them in the patriar-chal business economy?Criticism: Where men are per-ceived as assertive and confident, women having stronger characters are perceived as aggressive, domi-nating and bossy. Overcoming soci-etal discriminations and disrupting societal stigma are among the first steps women should embrace for a successful career. Networking: It is a time con-suming process and with family and children one of women's great-est constraint. Building a reliable support system and breaking the guilt trip is paramount to over-come this challenge. Networking opens new avenues to reach the target market and build a niche for businesses. Funding: Men look at a busi-ness challenge in a more linear way when compared to women, making it difficult for them to un-derstand a women's business per-spective. Whereas, when women entrepreneurs share experiences and interest with women investors, it provides a parallel level of think-ing and opening avenues to better understand each other's perspec-tive and demolish gender bias in the funding process. PerspectivesPowerful, successful, self-made are terms rarely used to represent women, but there have always been women in every era who have managed to change the history with their `never say die attitude'. Modern self-made billionaires like Cher Wang (the owner of HTC), Sara Blakely (the master mind be-hind `Spanx', a multi-million dollar undergarment company), Oprah Winfrey and JK Rowling are some of the amazing inspirations for `from rags to riches' stories who in-spire innumerable women striving to make it BIG! ALTHOUGH, WOMEN CONTINUE TO FACE NUMEROUS CHALLENGES THE SOCIETAL OUTLOOK HAS SEEN A DRASTIC CHANGE OVER THE DECADE
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