Study: The State of Social Enterprise Survey 2013 (Social Enterprise UK, 2013)
Finding: Social enterprises are attracting more female leaders and more leaders from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities than mainstream businesses.
InPower Insight: Women are drawn to organizations that define success in terms of social and financial results.
Summary:
“As presented in Figure 10, female leaders are a key feature of the social enterprise movement, with 38% of social enterprises led by women. As Figure 10 demonstrates, when compared with SMEs this figure increases slightly to 9%
and contrasts favorably with SMEs27 (19%28). Social enterprise continues to attract women entrepreneurs in ever-greater numbers – 41% of the leaders of social enterprise start-ups under three years old are women. The data arguably shows that social enterprise is emerging as the natural home of the female entrepreneur, especially when you look at other figures of women leaders in FTSE 100 companies (3%29), FTSE 250 companies (4%30) and the senior civil service (24.5% – 2010 figures31).
Career Coaching Tip: When you’re feeling like a fish out of water for wanting to measure the success of your organization by metrics other than financial results, know that you’re part of a larger movement to create social change with successful businesses. If your company doesn’t want to reward you for it, perhaps you should look at other organizations who will. Always keep your options open and feel confident that your broader concept of success is helping any business you’re a part of.
Keywords: Success, social enterprise, women in leadership,
Guide to Women in Leadership
Organizations with women in their executive suites regularly out-perform others. Yet rising female executives (and their mentors) are frustrated at how hard it is to break through the glass ceiling. In this extensive guide, Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel into higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
