Communities of Women Entrepreneurs Post-COVID-19

Have you lived through experiences and learning situations in communities of women entrepreneurs? In the post-pandemic period, you will find help and accompaniment in such communities and among female business leaders: ideas, prototypes, the co-creation of solutions, financing, team building, potential partners, plans for post-COVID-19 economic recovery, distribution channels, business models, legal advice, competitions and access to networks of different industries in the ecosystem.

Communities of women entrepreneurs are groups where we feel listened to and valued for our ideas, where we can celebrate our achievements and make agreements to benefit our entrepreneurial careers after the social isolation of Covid-19, and as we did before it. Women have not always been able to meet freely. In the 18th century, women's clubs were ordered to disband, no more than five women could meet together, and women were not allowed to attend public assemblies.

Today, communities still exist around the world where women cannot talk about all the topics they would like or need to share. In a community in India that I visited a few years ago, women entrepreneurs only talked to each other about topics that were related to the family. It was only after implementing the Marketplace Literacy Project training model that they began to meet to share the challenges, adversities and market opportunities they were facing, because only then did they recognize their identity as women entrepreneurs who are part of a community.

For a long time, women felt that they had to think and express themselves alone, with no access to a quality education. However, when women began to meet, they shared books and experiences that helped them develop intellectually, and, as they got together more often, institutions and organizations began to take their progress and contributions into account. Liberating thoughts can only come from women who work for other women, collaborating and reinforcing each other.

After Covid-19, we will have the opportunity to create, promote, strengthen and participate in communities of women entrepreneurs. Identifying the stage of life we ​​are at could help ourselves and other entrepreneurs. What type of entrepreneur are you and where are you situated in terms of support, roles, motivation and priorities? In order to accompany us and help us through the empathy and union in the ecosystem, the model of O'Neil and Bilimoria (2005) classifies women entrepreneurs according to the stage in which they find themselves:

• Dreampreneur: Women entrepreneurs who receive emotional, physical or financial support from their mom or dad; there are no children, sick people, old people, employees or other people who depend on them; their motivation is internal in relation to everything that leads them to grow, and experience and learn new things. Their priority is their entrepreneurship.
• Carepreneur or mompreneur: Women entrepreneurs who are mothers of babies, children or adolescents; those who care for sick or disabled people; or those who have elderly people depending on them physically, financially or emotionally. Their entrepreneurship is in the growth stage and they are expanding their participation in the markets. They have already recovered from two economic crises; they have simultaneous internal and external motivations that lead them to different decisions; their priority is the balance between their personal, family and entrepreneurial lives.
• Fullnesspreneur: Women entrepreneurs who want to make a difference. They are motivated by helping others to set up a business, to grow; no one depends on them physically, emotionally or financially. They have experience, assets and consolidated companies that are operating; their priority is to transcend.

You may identify with one or two types of women entrepreneurs at the same time. This is a dynamic model, but recognizing what stage you are at could provide clarity about your personal needs and those of your business activities, and integrating and participating in communities of women entrepreneurs will also help.

These communities group together different types of women entrepreneurs, such as dreampreneurs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) areas, mompreneurs in education, and fullnesspreneurs in manufacturing, for example. All of them are united by sisterhood agreements, achieving self-affirmation for every woman and recognizing differences. While differences are being recognized, common interests, needs, adversities and options are identified in their entrepreneurial ventures and stages of life, helping them to make agreements, join together, recover or celebrate, to feel accompanied and enjoy credibility.

In the entrepreneurial ecosystem, female entrepreneurial communities are growing and multiplying. The experience and foresight of women entrepreneurs is valuable in times of economic and emotional recovery, where we need new and better solutions that transcend, with the contribution and vision of more women moving towards sustainability.