How Covid-19 has impacted female-led businesses, and what we can do to help.

The pandemic and its disproportional impact on female-led businesses

It is not big news that the Covid pandemic has had a bizarre impact on the economy since we first heard of it. As expected, it hit small businesses much harder — and that is especially true for female-led companies. Recent researches suggest that women’s lives are being affected disproportionately and differently from men.

A recent survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been able to document what we all suspected: female-led small businesses were hugely impacted by the pandemic. Not to mention the huge gender gap in income we have all experienced as women, female-led businesses also tend to have less access to funding.

My own experience

As a female immigrant, I have experienced the impact of the pandemic firsthand. A few years ago, I moved across the ocean to learn more about ceramics in the hopes to thrive in this area. I found a job in a restaurant that allowed me to pay for my university tuition and all went fairly well until Covid hit.

My employer had to close the doors, and my ability to support myself and pay for my education went down with it. Thankfully, I am lucky enough to have an extremely supportive family that allowed me to go through this terrible moment without starving, but I know this is not exactly true for other women out there.

The thing is, during this tough period my mental health completely went down the toilet, as well as my energy and hopes to focus on my (very early stage) ceramics business.

What can we do to help?

I initially started Women in Ceramics as an effort to inspire myself and other women by the amazing work produced by females in our field. After a long period of struggle (and having to focus the very small amount of energy I still had left on getting a new job to pay the bills), the project was paused — and that’s sad, to say the least.

The good news, though, is that I’m doing better now and full of energy to bring this project to the next level. I believe the internet to be a powerful tool to amplify the voices of women producing great work that definitely should be put in front of a bigger audience.

Would you like to help in this project and learn more about Women in Ceramics? If so, here are a few ways how you can help me achieve this mission:

• Follow Women in Ceramics on Instagram and share the project with your friends — the more eyes, the better.
• Engage and share the content produced by females working in ceramics — we are building a database where you can get to know a bit more about their projects and it will be live soon. In the meantime, you can check them on Instagram.
• Subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about the project and get to know incredible female artists every week.
• If you have the means to, consider supporting the project financially — running a website does not come for free and I would really appreciate your help to keep this project up and running.

I believe in collaboration over competition — whenever a woman thrives, we all do. Let’s build this community together!

Get in touch!

If you want to chat further about the project, just shoot me a message at priscilla@womeninceramics.com

With lots of love,

Priscilla