Kindred is investing in women – not just for a day, but all year, every year.
The Kindred team spent International Women’s Day celebrating the women in the Kindred community who’re making a difference in the places that they live and work – no more so than the Women in the Know, the group of Knowsley-based women who joined our place-based programme last year.
UN Women’s International Women’s Day theme for 2024 is Invest in women: Accelerate progress. Speaking at the event, Kindred’s programme director Erika Rushton reminded us that, still, 2% of all investment nationally goes to women. Kindred, by comparison, has invested 49%* of the money spent so far in women-led businesses, alongside another 11% in businesses led by both men and women. That’s 60% directly into businesses with women at the top. Shockingly, she also pointed out that just 0.02% of money nationally goes to Black female entrepreneurs, which is why 22% of Kindred’s money has gone to Black-led STOs, with a target of 25%, of whom half are women.
“Women-led businesses play an essential role in creating jobs, raising standards of living, and boosting inclusive growth. Female entrepreneurs, however, continue to face trouble accessing financing, capital, and technology; experience legal, regulatory and policy barriers, including difficulties registering businesses, and changing social and cultural norms,” says the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, in The Case for Investing in Women Entrepreneurs.
The Women in the Know programme is supporting 20 women from the borough, predominantly working in the fields of creativity and care.
Posters from our Women in the Know campaign, created by illustrator and graphic designer Kath Anderson.
The first session kicked off with a storytelling workshop, to help them highlight the key products and advantages of their work; the second, last Friday, looked into selling products and services online.
Chris Spriggs is Kindred’s place lead, and developed the Women in the Know programme. She says: “It was so great to welcome over 30 amazing women to the Kindred offices last Friday, March 8. We celebrated just how much women have achieved over many years in terms of equality and progress here in the Liverpool City region and in society worldwide. We know there is so much further to go until women have real equality in this society and we’ll keep working for that, highlighting injustice and unfairness. But, last Friday, we took just a few hours out to celebrate the brilliant achievements of women right across the Liverpool City Region. They’re women who, together, are determined to set up and build their social businesses and work in collaboration to build a new and fairer economy here.”
* Investment by percentage of investees