Supporting Jewish Women Entrepreneurs
NERA, the year-old organization supporting Orthodox female tech entrepreneurs, is doing commendable work. NERA recognizes the unique obstacles faced by Orthodox Jewish women who wish to be entrepreneurs. Because of their unfortunately low current numbers, they tend to lack a like-minded support group and network, both so crucial to business success. By teaching Orthodox women about raising venture capital and legal issues for startups, and creating an accelerator program for them, NERA is doing a real service to help advance this group of women as entrepreneurs. NERA’s backing from today’s most important technology companies, including Google and Microsoft, highlights how helpful the organization is.
According to a recent World Economic Forum report, women started 49% of new startup businesses in the United States in 2021, up from 28% in 2019. As promising as that is, women face particular challenges launching successful businesses. According to Crunchbase, only a measly 2.3% of venture capital funding goes to startup companies run by women. Not surprisingly, therefore, only a similarly low rate of women-led businesses have made more than $1 million, much lower than the success rate for businesses run by men. In addition to gender biases in the workplace, Inc. reports that 48% of female entrepreneurs lack the crucial mentorship all business founders need.
At the same time, it is important to recognize the important benefits to society of women-run businesses. Such businesses provide greater financial independence, cultural integration, and power to the women who lead them. Additionally, when women run businesses, they can bring a different vantage point to longstanding products or services where women’s interests have long been overlooked. As Caroline Criado Perez documents in her book “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men,” too many everyday products are designed and tested with men in mind rather than women, which is why smartphones are often too big for women’s hands and women are more likely to be seriously hurt in car crashes. Women-led businesses can help correct such inequities. Jewish-run businesses can similarly address the particular needs of the Jewish community, such as lighting for Shabbat that complies with halakhic requirements.
The Orthodox Jewish community would therefore be well served to support female entrepreneurs. In addition to the groundbreaking efforts of NERA, it is crucial to also inculcate entrepreneurial values and skills at a younger age in the community. These values and skills range from financial literacy to problem solving, communication, goal setting, teamwork, cultivation of curiosity, and resilience. I personally am grateful to have had the opportunity to work on these skills in 4th grade at SAR Academy when I and fellow students cultivated a market for and sold a sports game, yielding a nice profit. I have further had the fortune to be able to take advantage of the various business clubs at SAR High School as a stepping stone to start my own successful sneaker reselling business in 10th grade. To accomplish this, I had to draw on all of the foregoing skills and then some. The Orthodox Jewish community would be well served to support girls in high school and even earlier by providing them with the opportunity to hone their entrepreneurial skills and expose them to business opportunities.
Just as NERA signifies the ninth verse of King Solomon’s song Eishet Chayil (Woman of Valor, Book of Proverbs) and a woman’s devotion to her family, including through entrepreneurship, by keeping her candles (Nera, נֵרָהּ) burning late at night, it is equally important to heed one of the later verses in King Solomon’s song: קָמוּ בָנֶֽיהָ וַיְּאַשְּׁרֽוּהָ, that a woman’s children rise up and acclaim her. What better way for Jewish children to acclaim their entrepreneurial mothers than by learning to be like them?
This writing was originally published in a somewhat different form in The Jewish Press on September 2, 2022.
