How This Village Is Finding The Performance Gap
Written, produced, and edited by Tahisha Charles and Brandi Griffin for the Northeastern University graduate course, Fundamentals of Digital Journalism.
A fusion between WS Development’s tiny homes division and successful women-owned businesses creates a cultivated space for promoting these retailers in Boston’s Seaport district. This curated space, hosted by WS Development, features eight women-founded businesses that create She-Village. The actual name of the project is The Current, which is intended to be a rotational space of businesses with common themes. The first edition of the project ran with the momentum of female empowerment and movements like #MeToo from the media and created its first theme around women-centric businesses.
We spoke with Carina Donoso, the director of retail incubation at She-Village, to gain insight to the inspiration behind She-Village and the selection process for the businesses that have spaces in the village. Below is an edited audio clip of the conversation.
“Business is getting better. More and more women are getting into the business field, but, some of it starts at an early age. Some of it starts with role models. So, it is true that women seem to think of it as less than a career opportunity than men. Things are getting better though.”
— Kim Eddleston, a professor in the D’Amore-McKim Business School at Northeastern University
While this is a timely concept and an important project, the real concern is where did this need to specifically promote women-owned businesses come from?
Kim Eddleston, a professor in the D’Amore-McKim Business School at Northeastern University, and a female-entrepreneurship guru explained the challenges that women face when starting a business, and the hurdles they have to overcome to sustain those ventures.
“There’s something that we actually call the performance gap,” professor Eddleston began to explain. “When we look at the rates of entrepreneurship, it is still seen as a male profession and we actually talk about it being a male preserve. Some of it has to do with the way we describe the typical entrepreneur, you know, as pioneers, cowboys, words like pirates, very masculine.”
Society has to begin by normalizing women’s roles in the business world more broadly, but also in the entrepreneurship sector.
“There’s also more role models for men. Some things are changing, things are getting better. But we also still have that form of legacy,” Eddleston said as she described some of the trends that lead to this gap in men and women entrepreneurs.