The Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization (WEDO) convened at the United Nations Headquarters last week for their annual summit, celebrating the 11th anniversary of Women’s Entrepreneurship Day.
The grassroots movement, officially recognized on November 19, empowers women worldwide through financial independence, enabling them to become leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs.
“We’ve brought awareness towards that issue, and you see now everyone in the world is speaking about the importance of women,” said WEDO founder and CEO Wendy Diamond. “We have all these different movements that are happening around the world to increase the visibility of women in our future, and I think what you’re going to see more and more is that we are going to reach gender equality once and for all.”
This year’s summit honored several female leaders and innovators for their trailblazing entrepreneurship and efforts to create economic opportunities for women worldwide, including entrepreneurs like Suneera Madhani, CEO of billion-dollar fintech company Worth AI, and Tanis Jorge, co-founder of Trulioo, a global identity verification platform.
Several initiatives were also highlighted, such as the AI Free Education Program that launched on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day. The program aims to empower one million women with AI expertise and teach them how to effectively use AI tools to elevate their businesses.
Another spotlighted program included Defy Ventures, which provides entrepreneurship training to incarcerated individuals. This year, the initiative celebrated an 84% success rate for incarcerated women entrepreneurs, showing its potential to transform lives.
“When women are empowered in business, they have self-confidence, they have dignity, [and] they don’t allow human rights violations,” said Diamond. “When women are empowered in business, companies are more profitable,” she added.
The 2024 Wells Fargo Impact of Women-Owned Business report shows the growth of women-owned businesses from 2019 to 2023. Over 14 million U.S. businesses are women-owned, representing 39.1% of U.S. enterprises. Not only that, women-owned businesses generate $2.7 billion in revenue and provide more than 12 million jobs.
The impact of women’s entrepreneurship on the economy is undeniable, yet disparities prevail. While women-owned businesses account for less than 40% of U.S. enterprises, as mentioned, men-owned businesses account for 54% of all enterprises, revealing a staggering gender gap in business ownership. According to the report, if women-owned businesses generated the same average revenue as men-owned businesses, they could contribute an additional $7.9 trillion to the economy.
When considering race, the disparities deepen: 2.1 million of the 14 million women-owned businesses are Black women-owned, making up 14% of all women-owned businesses. If Black women-owned businesses achieved the average revenue of white women, they would generate an additional $361.2 billion. If they earned the same average revenue as men, they would bring a whopping $1.5 trillion to the economy.
“Bringing more access to capital for women entrepreneurs, as well the digital tools and the education, is very key,” Diamond said about ending these disparities.
Programs like the AI Free Education Program and Defy Ventures are ways WEDO is combating these inequalities in business entrepreneurship.“With programs like these,” Diamond said in a press release for the summit, “We’re equipping women to break barriers and build legacies that impact generations to come.”Looking towards the future, Diamond encouraged everyone to join their next campaign, #ChooseWOMEN, inviting people to support and buy from women-owned businesses.
