Usually, when we think of entrepreneurship, we can list at least a few famous founders of successful businesses. When you think of great entrepreneurs, what are some well-known names that come to mind? Perhaps names like Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) or even Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) sound familiar? Regardless of whether we know any famous entrepreneurs, when we think about business owners or CEOs, a certain picture tends to come to our minds: typically males in fancy suits putting in long hours to gain their success.
This is because the representation of successful business creators in media and movies are men. Since women have joined the workforce, there has been very little representation of female entrepreneurship. Often opinions are thrown around that women don’t work as hard for the success of their business, but it comes down to women having to work a lot harder to gain respect and be taken seriously.
In an interview with a star from the popular entrepreneurial TV series Dragon’s Den, Jenny Campbell explains that there are many issues with the perceptions of women in business that run all the way to the top people in the industry. Campbell is a very successful businesswoman who sold her business for the Canadian dollar equivalent of $85.4 million, but she claims in many business meeting around the world, she is still often assumed to just be the wife of whichever businessman standing next to her. You can check out her full interview with The Telegraph in the link below.
Unfortunately, even successful female names with international companies don’t get as much recognition. Most people know Oprah Winfrey as a celebrity because of her widely marketed daytime talk show. Her net worth is over $3 billion USD. But what about Jin Sook Chang, the founder of the international clothing store Forever 21, with a net worth of 3.1 billion USD? We hear of Steve Jobs, but what about Wang Laichun (net worth $1.5 billion USD), the chairholder of Luxshare, the electronics manufacturing company that supplies Apple with most of the parts for their products?
We need a wider representation of female entrepreneurship and recognition of their success to defeat stereotypes that negatively affect women in business. There are many successful business women in this world, and due to the nature of the industry, they have probably worked even harder than men to get to their respected positions. Women can bring unique perspectives to businesses to create even more innovation and technology to many markets and industries.
In the Dragon’s Den episode below, Alicia Woods successfully presents her market of women’s coveralls for women who work in mining and other trades that require protective work equipment. Woods displays a great example of how women can bring expertise to large business markets that men simply cannot. 
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