{"id":5611,"date":"2018-12-19T07:23:07","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T07:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/being-called-a-mumpreneur-is-patronising\/"},"modified":"2018-12-19T07:23:07","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T07:23:07","slug":"being-called-a-mumpreneur-is-patronising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/being-called-a-mumpreneur-is-patronising\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Being called a mumpreneur is patronising’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"SallyImage copyright<\/span>
\n Sally Bunkham<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image caption<\/span>
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\n Mum’s Back founder Sally Bunkham says mumpreneur implies “someone with a little hobby”
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sally Bunkham founded her online retail business nearly two years ago after the birth of her second child.<\/p>\n

To begin with, she says, she didn’t mind being labelled a mumpreneur. <\/p>\n

“But as I’ve gone through my business journey I’ve realised that it’s a bit patronising,” because it implies it’s “someone with a little hobby”.<\/p>\n

She’s not alone: A survey of 500 female business founders showed that nearly two thirds of them regarded mumpreneur as a “negative” term.<\/p>\n

Nearly half said they found it “patronising”, while one third said it had prevented them from being taken seriously. <\/p>\n

“You’d never hear the term ‘Dadpreneur’,” they pointed out, in the survey which was conducted for currency exchange company, Moneycorp. <\/p>\n

The term “mumpreneur” was coined in the late Nineties. <\/p>\n

The dictionary definition is “a woman who combines running a business enterprise with looking after her children”.<\/p>\n

‘Backlash’<\/h2>\n

Twenty years on and the word has spawned acres of newsprint, and divided opinion among female entrepreneurs. <\/p>\n

Ms Bunkham says although there are plenty of women who don’t mind being called mumpreneurs, there is a growing backlash online and on social media sites. <\/p>\n

Her website Mum’s Back, has been selling treats for new mothers since March 2017 – things like wine and cheese that they’ve had to abstain from during pregnancy. <\/p>\n

Initially, she felt the word mumpreneur was fine because it “encompassed my two roles as someone running a business and being a mum. Mumpreneur sums it up”.<\/p>\n

Now, though, Ms Bunkham says it bothers her because it implies “someone with a little hobby, a sideline to do when the baby’s asleep.”<\/p>\n

The worst occasion was in the early days of her business when she was asked to speak at an event and she was referred to as a mumpreneur on the promotional literature. <\/p>\n

“I didn’t say anything about it – I brushed it under the carpet.”<\/p>\n

“I feel like it is a bit sexist and I feel that it is undermining my business because it gives out the assumption that it’s just a hobby, it’s not a serious thing.”<\/p>\n

These days she says she would definitely ask for the word to be removed. <\/p>\n

“I’d definitely feel comfortable saying I’m not comfortable with it. I’ve got more confidence over the last couple of years.” <\/p>\n

Why do people use it?<\/p>\n

“I think because as a woman today you are still expected to work like you don’t have kids and parent your kids like you don’t work”.<\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n thewomansroom blog<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Jo Fairley prefers the term flexi-preneur
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Jo Fairley co-founded the organic chocolate brand Green & Black’s in 1991, before the term mumpreneur was popularised.<\/p>\n

Her family is now grown up and she admits she has never been called a mumpreneur, but she’s thrown her weight behind criticism of the stereotype.<\/p>\n

She says: “Every time I hear the word I… hear it being prefaced with ‘just a [mumpreneur]’. <\/p>\n

“You don’t get people calling them dadpreneurs. I literally wouldn’t be doing this if there was a word called dadpreneur, that’s not a level playing field.”<\/p>\n

‘Flexi-preneur?’<\/h2>\n

So are there any alternatives to mumpreneur?<\/p>\n

Ms Fairley goes for flexi-preneur: “You’re running your business round some kind of other commitment” and “because it sounds as if you’re much more in control of the situation”.<\/p>\n

On Sally Bunkham’s business card it says “founder”. <\/p>\n

Entrepreneur is “a bit masculine, fast cars, suits”, she says. “The words entrepreneur and mumpreneur seem poles apart.”<\/p>\n

And Vicki Psarias founder of the Honest Mum blog has written a book called Mumboss, billed as a “guide to surviving and thriving at work and at home”.<\/p>\n

But whatever you pick – pick carefully. You never know whether 20 years from now, these terms could have fallen out of favour, too. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Image copyright Sally Bunkham Image caption Mum’s Back founder Sally Bunkham says mumpreneur implies “someone with a little hobby” Sally Bunkham founded her online retail business nearly two years ago after the birth of her second child. To begin with, she says, she didn’t mind being labelled a mumpreneur. “But as I’ve gone through my … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}