HeForShe: In conjunction with National Women’s Small Business month

October is National Women's Small Business Month celebrating the creative entrepreneurs who took the plunge to start a small business despite gender barriers. According to the 2020 report from the National Women’s Business Council, in 1972, women only owned 4.6% of all businesses in the United States. Now women own 42% of businesses in the United States. Here’s more good news about this important sector of the U.S. economy:

• There are nearly 13 million women-owned businesses in the United States, employing 9.4 million workers and generating revenue of $1.9 trillion.
• Women-owned businesses generate $1.9 trillion annually.
• Women of color account for 50% of female business owners.

The challenges to women-owned businesses today aren’t too different from the challenges in the past: access to capital, childcare responsibilities, and continue, a subtle societal prejudice against women entrepreneurs.

HeForShe is UN Women’s solidarity movement for gender equality. HeForShe invites men and boys to build on the work of the women’s movement as equal partners, crafting and implementing a shared vision of gender equality that will benefit all of humanity. Men play a critical role in supporting and enabling women’s economic empowerment. HeForShe engages men to examine how their own personal and professional lives can better recognize, reduce, and redistribute care and responsibilities between the market and the state, between the household and the workplace, and between women and men – UN Women, HeForShe, In Brief

On Wednesday, October 27, 5:30 pm at the Toledo Museum of Arts, Glass Pavilion, this year HeForShe will be featuring panelists of husband and wife, or partners in/for business together. In conjunction with the National Women’s Small Business for October, we are highlighting HeForShe that supports wife/partner, who is a business owner. The goal is for the speakers to share their stories, experiences, and insight into how they recognize as equal partners in business or for business, for the men as HeForShe helping each other to build/invest in the businesses, raise families/communities, and give back.

We believe collectively, we all can create the sustainable social and systematic change we

need to achieve equality and elevate women’s economic empowerment.