907: The Hidden Price of Being a Woman in Business (And Why You’re Not Imagining It)

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2:10Have you ever wondered why it feels harder to build a business as a woman? Well, it's not just you and Anna Gifty has the stats to prove it. This conversation will explain exactly why it feels that way and what we can do about it. I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven-figure online business that feels even better than it looks, all from my house in small town Minnesota with my family. Here, we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love.

2:52I've always loved turning big goals into reality and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain. Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no-fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. Ever feel like success seems a little more expensive for you than it does for everyone else?

3:30Like you're doing everything right. You're building the business, juggling the roles, playing the game, and yet you're still coming up short? Well, that's not in your head. It's actually real. And today's guest, Anna Gifty, is here to prove it. Anna is a Harvard-trained economist and the author of The Double Tax, a bold new book that breaks down the invisible cost women, especially women of color, pay just to participate in society. But what makes this conversation essential for entrepreneurs? Well, Anna shows how these taxes sneak into your business, your brand, your funding, your time, and what you can do to push back.

4:06From the cost of motherhood to beauty standards in the workplace, to why generational wealth building still feels out of reach, this episode is a masterclass in economic empowerment. And oh my gosh, Anna is giving it. This is not just theory. Anna actually gives you the tactical tools to change things. If you are building a business and wondering why it still feels this hard, or you want to be a part of rewriting the rules, this conversation is your permission slip. Anna Gifty, here's the warmest welcome. Welcome to the Gold Digger podcast. Anna, you studied public policy and economics at Harvard.

4:43So you are literally the perfect person for me to ask this question. What is one hidden double tax that entrepreneurs listening are likely paying without even realizing it? Yes. So first of all, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I'm extremely honored to be in community with you, in sisterhood with you, and just talking about the costs that women face. And so let's maybe kind of level set for a second. What is the double tax, right? So the double tax is the compounded cost of racism and sexism, right? So this idea that there's costs that come from being a woman, there's costs that come from being a racial minority, and then there's women who have those experiences simultaneously.

5:28And so I want to go ahead and address what you said first and foremost, which is how do we think about a hidden cost that affects entrepreneurs? And one thing that we know about business owners is that we need capital, right? In order to build a business, you need money. And so what we have seen in the research is that the folks who make decisions about who gets money is oftentimes reflective of what the double tax ultimately gets at. So I'm going to throw some numbers at you because, you know, I'm a numbers gal and I think that facts are important. And so according to Forbes, we know that white men make up 30 percent of our national population.

6:09Right. But they make up 58 percent of venture capitalist investors. So let me translate that for folks who might not be familiar with sort of finance speak. This idea of the individuals who actually decide whether or not you get those dollars into your business are disproportionately white and disproportionately male. Right. Now, the other thing that I want to add here, and this is like the first part of the double tax, so thinking about sort of gender inequality, white women make up the same amount of individuals who are part of the national population, 30%. However, they make up 11 % of the venture capitalist investors, right?

6:52The people who decide who gets the dollars sent to your business. So this idea of whether or not you prioritize a business's offering or product, right, it might be determined by whether or not you see value in it at all. And I think a lot of times people think this stuff is objective. They're like, well, you know, objectively speaking, you know, I'm a man and I must know that, you know, what a woman wants is this and what a woman wants is that. And I'm far away from that. So I can make an objective calculation of what's going on. But the gag of the matter is our lived experiences inform whether or not we place value on certain things.

7:31And so if 11 percent of the venture capitalist investors are white women, that means that things that white women value may not be served, may not be funded and ultimately may not be produced, which means that there's a huge missing market here that businesses are not even being able to tap into because they can't even get the money to start building products for that market. And then the gag of the matter is the double tax says, well, take gender inequality, add racial inequality. And what we end up with is 7 % of venture capital investors are women of color across the board. That's combined.

8:13We're talking about Asian women. We're talking about Black women. We're talking about Latina women, Native women. In total, we make up 7%. So now think about it. If we're missing a chunk of the market for white women, and we then take it to women of color, we're missing another chunk of the market. money is being left on the table, not just by the venture capitalist investors who could be making a buck, but also by those who hopefully will be served by the products that are created by these women entrepreneurs, by these women business owners. And so that's why it's extremely important to think about how does the double tax show up in business?

8:50It shows up in business by the underrepresentation that shows up in who gets capital and why, but also shows up in how that underrepresentation has a domino effect. on who gets served and ultimately what gets produced for society. Wow. I mean, I have heard those stats thrown around, like you said, and when it's broken down, you not only think about the top end, right? Who's making the decision, but you also think about the actual product market and what's even born, right? Like how is a product in a business born. And it's interesting too, because then it just is, it is that domino effect of like, there aren't even products created for people who need them that could be successful businesses.

9:37It's like missed opportunities across the board. And one thing I want to give an example for is let's think about, you know, when you're going into a building, there's steps sometimes, and then there's ramps. Ramps were created with disabled people in mind. But let's say you have a limp in your leg one day? Are you taking the steps or are you taking the ramp? So this is an example to illustrate that something that was created with certain groups in mind actually serves everyone at the end of the day. And ultimately that is the point of the double tax, this idea that if you actually address the benchmark of progress towards women and women who are definitely underserved, you actually end up solving problems for all other people because we are targeting those who are experiencing the most marginalization.

10:28I was at lunch the other day with a friend and we got into this discussion about how it's really interesting that oftentimes women are taught to admire and respect men and women, right? But men are often not taught to respect and admire women. And we were talking about it because it was fascinating. And I see it a lot of times in different business rooms, even a business book. I was listening to a business book the other day, brilliant book, not going to name it. And every example they gave was a white man. And it was just interesting to me. It's like, you don't even see the gap. Right. And it was just a really interesting discussion that I had with my friend of like, isn't it fascinating that we don't raise boys to look up to women as leaders and thought leaders and innovators and inventors.

11:23And it is, the gap is everywhere in funding, in ideology, in admiration. It's just fascinating. How did you start studying this? Like what was your path? Cause you're so passionate. I'm like, tell me more. Thank you so much. Well, I want to address what you said really quickly before I jump into the path. You know, that's kind of why I found it odd when we started hearing conversations about we need more male energy in the workplace. Because as someone who has just written a book about the cost that women face, I said, more male energy. We got enough of that. We got enough of that. You know what I'm saying?

12:00Yeah. We know from the stats that the top 10 paying career paths are disproportionately white and male. We're talking at least 52 % of the individuals in the top 10 paying career paths are white men. So when I'm looking at, you know, small incremental changes that are happening for women, for women of color, for other groups that are marginalized, my immediate thought is, so because you had to share a crumb of your success, now everybody's crashing out. That's crazy. You know what I'm saying? So I wanted to just note that, that I think what you're making a point about is very true. This idea of who's the face of leadership and how does that trickle down to the kind of decisions that we make, not just in our everyday, but across society.

12:48So to your point about your question about how did I get into this? So I'm going to take it back a little bit, if you don't mind, if you'll indulge me. So I grew up in low income housing, kind of like a rent stabilized neighborhood in Maryland, but I was in the wealthiest county. So it's like low income housing, wealthiest county. And this meant that I was eligible for Head Start. So for those who don't know, Head Start is a program for low-income families' children. It provides like pre-K, kindergarten preparation, et cetera, et cetera. An opportunity of a lifetime started knocking on our doorstep shortly after.

13:24So right around the time I was getting ready to graduate, the county instructed a new private school that was being built that they had to award a single full scholarship to a student at Head Start. There was an interview process. They met with the families. They met with the children. And my family and I were selected for that full scholarship. What that meant is that I had the opportunity to go from a very familiar background of, you know, people are dealing with the same problems. People are dealing with the same economic reality to a completely new experience where I heard the word cul-de-sac for the first time.

14:01I saw a lot of folks, right, with the playgrounds and the play sets that I saw on TV in their own backyard. This idea of people having soccer practice and being able to go on vacation, that was very foreign to me. And so from a very, very young age, it became very clear that, you know, depending on who you are and depending on where you come from, you might have a very different experience with the way that you lead your life. And a lot of that is heavily influenced by what you have economic access to, right? You know, my parents were working multiple jobs, whereas my classmates' parents might have had one really well-paying job.

14:41And understanding that these differences make a huge impact on the children of the folks who are, you know, trying to make a living and make a life kind of became salient to me almost immediately when I was younger. And of course, as I went through my experience, I still stayed in these private schools. The kids just got richer. I remember there was a kid that rented out a clubhouse at the Ravens Stadium, the Baltimore Ravens Stadium, and we had access to the stadium. And it was a level of wealth that I hadn't comprehended. I did not know that we could just walk into a football stadium for somebody's birthday party.

15:21My family certainly couldn't do that. And there's folks in my community that couldn't do that. And then, of course, now being at Harvard, seeing that wealth even to another level where people are taking private jets to other countries for the weekend and coming back and doing classes on Monday. So I think for me, the inequality that I've witnessed both here in the States, but also in Ghana, where I'm from, kind of made it clear to me that if we want a world that's more fair, if we want a world that's more equal, we have to be on the same page about the facts. And a lot of times these facts are scattered, right?

16:00So as an academic, it's my task to ask and answer questions. So I'm on a treasure hunt for the answers to the questions that I have about inequality. But I also recognize that there are people in my life, people in your life that deal with inequality every day, but they don't have the luxury of time to look for the answers for why the inequality that they're facing is happening to them. But also, how do they begin to address things that are unequal to them? And so for me, this book really was born out of how do we bring all of the information that we know into the forefront, into one place, so that people have one place that they can refer to and say, actually, that is my experience.

16:40And here's the data to back that up. Here's what we need to do to move things forward. Hey, I'm going to have a kid. Have we thought about a paid family leave? I read about it in the double tax that it does this X, Y and Z. So giving people the tools at their doorstep to advocate for themselves, to advocate against inequality and to push for things that are more equal to them and that helps their life get much better. That is. I mean, it's just amazing and incredible. I feel like you were a kid with big questions. Were you like the kid that was like the other day my six year old was like, so like, how do the clouds get?

17:18I was like, that's a dad. I'm going like, but I can imagine you as a really curious child. And I just, I don't know. I feel like you still have that energy about you, which I love because it's pushing you to find the answers to those big questions. That's right. Let's pause here to thank our sponsors who make these impactful conversations possible. Now, while you wait, take a moment and ask yourself, what systems might you be navigating that weren't built with you in mind? When we come back, Anna's going to share what we aren't being told about wealth building that we need to know. It is so juicy.

17:52So stay with me and we'll be right back. This podcast is brought to you by Mercury, banking that helps entrepreneurs do more with their money. OK, I remember in the early days of my entrepreneurship journey, clients would literally mail me checks and then I would have to drive all the way to the bank to deposit them. It took me literal years to make things go digital. And I am ashamed to admit I still have a filing cabinet with paper contracts because I'm way too afraid to throw them away. But that's the beauty of growth, right? You learn what systems serve you and which ones hold you back. Mercury is one of those systems that just works.

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19:40For a limited time, get 20 % off your first set of sheets plus free shipping at bowlandbranch.com slash golddigger. That's bowlandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch.com slash golddigger to save 20 % and unlock free shipping. Exclusions apply. fine. Let's talk about capital because I think this is really interesting. One of my friends, Arlen Hamilton is amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. And she has just been doing such big things with Backstage Capital. I love it. And so I feel like I've learned so much from her about this, but I want to talk about like access to capital because it's a huge challenge.

20:18We've touched on it. But what do we need to know about wealth building that we're not being told? Like, how does this actually impact a listener of the show who is trying to start a business or wants to start a business or sees a friend struggling to start their business? What is that about? So I love this question. I think it's such an important question. So thank you so much for asking it. What we're not really having an honest conversation about when it comes to wealth building is that people have different wells of wealth that they're pulling from. So what do I mean by that? I mean that my well of wealth that I can pull from is different from your well of wealth that you can pull from.

20:55And of course, like I said, I'm a numbers person. So I'm going to go ahead and lay out some numbers, and then I'm going to connect it to an actual visual of what this means. So according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, okay, this is part of our economic ecosystem that makes sure that our economy is healthy. What they found in 2022 is that for every dollar of wealth a white guy has, right? And by the way, we don't hate white guys here. We're just, you guys have the benchmark right now. So we're comparing everything to you. White women have 78 cents. Huge drop. We're talking, you know, around, you know, 22 cents drop.

21:38Hispanic women have 14 cents. Black women have eight cents. Okay? So when we talk about different wells of wealth that people can pull from, right, when they're starting their business, when they're starting a venture, when they're even starting a nonprofit, right? There's certain industries where if you don't have a well of wealth to pull from that is deep and expansive, you can't survive, right? Like in life. Good luck. Good luck. Right? And so the visual I want to kind of give people here is let's say that we're on a racetrack. Okay? We're on a racetrack before the gun is fired and the guy says, ready, set, go.

22:23He says, hold on. I want lanes two, three and five to move up two steps. I want lane five to move up an additional five steps. Lane six, move up two more steps. Right. And then right before he says that, he said, OK, let's let the race begin. Ready, set, go. Tell me who's going to win that. The person who's closer to the finish line. And that is the point around wealth building. This idea that there's people who are closer to wells of wealth, to opportunities to build wealth than other people. And unfortunately, that is tied up in the history of this country. Right. One of my most favorite pieces of research has come out in the last five years is by a dear friend, Dr.

23:12Laura Derencourt and her wonderful co-authors. And they call this paper the wealth of two nations. Essentially what they do is they document what we call the racial wealth gap, the difference in wealth between black folks and white folks from 1860. That predates, by the way, yeah, the abolition of slavery all the way to 2020. So right before the COVID pandemic. And essentially what they find is that in 1860, the wealth ratio, how many dollars of wealth white folks have to how many dollars of wealth black folks have. was nearly 60 to 1. What does that mean, y 'all? It means that for every dollar of wealth white folks had, Black folks had almost two cents.

24:02Almost two cents. Now, I just told you 2022 numbers. Did I not? Who was closer to that? Black women. They've only seen an increase by about six cents since then. Right? It's progress, but like, no. Yeah. It's laughable. Hundreds of years. Right. And so then the question of how does that trickle into other parts of your entrepreneurial journey, your journey as a business person? well, if you don't have a lot of capital to start with, capital begets capital. How then can you invest zero dollars to make more money? Right. And what they find in their paper is that what has kept the racial wealth gap fixed at about six to one.

24:56Is that capital gains entered the picture. This idea of people making money off of stocks, passive income off of investments. I remember I spoke to a dear friend of mine. I said, you know, what do you do now that you're retired? And he said, I just manage investments. And I said, I love that for you. But the gag of the matter is women in general are not positioned to do that. And women of color, especially black women, are definitely not positioned to do that because of the historical nature of wealth building opportunities in this country. A lot of folks will say things like buying property, buying homes, if we're talking about personal wealth.

25:34But we also know that the laws that have come into place that allow women to actually be active participants in society when it comes to wealth building, we're talking 50, 60 years old. they just got here so this idea that you know there's certain people who've had hundreds of years in terms of a head start and now certain people are now getting their footing that is 100 percent going to impact whether you can get capital whether you can be trusted with capital right there's people who have years on you that have shown time and time that they can invest the capital and make it make money back and it also means that your proximity to capital is still very limited right and so i think there's a lot of people who beat themselves up oh my gosh why am i not able to you know make a million dollars in revenue or have a hundred thousand dollars in profit perhaps it's because of the well of wealth that you even get to pull from folks forget like folks like jeff bezos and you know bill gates have parents who had wealth that is what allowed them to take time from their jobs and build their business so the antidote to that in my opinion is to get in community if you can't get individual wealth to push you forward get collective wealth start pushing into that yeah pull resources use that as a catalyst because no one is self-made here and that's probably the last thing i mentioned on our podcast today, but no one is self-made.

27:07Everyone started from something. So if you feel like you have nothing to start from, try to link arms with somebody who might and move things forward. Yeah. I love that. And I think there are some amazing pioneers out there who are helping that process. Absolutely. Like ushering it in with love and resources, which is exactly what we need. you kind of touched on this and I want to go even deeper on it because one thing that I love that you're passionate about is this role of caregiving and how beyond capital caregiving also disproportionately impacts women's earning potential and so you know I'm a mom I'm juggling motherhood I have a lot of support with my sweet husband but a lot of business owners are juggling all the things right so motherhood they're caregivers for their elders I mean all different thing.