Defining Financial Feminism

Our investors and aspiring investors use The51’s Financial Feminist™ platform to educate themselves and put their capital (financial and human) to work in our impact funds for women-led and gender-diverse businesses.

But what is financial feminism?

The traditional capital landscape is shifting, and at the forefront of this change is financial feminism. More than just a buzzword, financial feminism represents a women-funded future that powers new wealth creation and brings about essential social change.

The51 & Financial Feminism

Financial feminism is financial equality for all. It's bridging the wealth gap and championing the full participation of all genders in our economy. We define feminism as: 

Women’s economic empowerment is key to unlocking gender equality. This includes participating equally in existing markets, acting as directors on boards, as venture capitalists, as entrepreneurs as business leaders, and as meaningful participants at all levels of economic decision-making.

From our POV, financial feminism is The51’s unique doctrine of feminism that believes in the equality of all genders, particularly as it applies to finances and financial opportunities. Our financial feminism is intersectional and inclusive of all gender-diverse people and individuals who identify as a woman.

Breaking that down further, here’s clarity on a couple terms that you’ll see us using on a regular basis:

• Feminism: The doctrine and movement that advocates equal rights for people of all genders.

• Feminist Capital: Wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization dedicated to the social, political, economic, and financial equality of the sexes.

• Gender-Diverse Person: Individuals who do not fall under traditional binary gender categories. Including, but not limited to: non-binary people, transgender people, two-spirited people.

• Intersectionality: A framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege.

• Women: All individuals who identify as women. Transgender women are women.

Key Pillars of Financial Feminism

Equal Access to Capital

Financial feminism advocates for equal access to capital for women-led and gender-diverse businesses. This goes beyond addressing the well-documented gender funding gap (since 2011, the amount of VC dollars going to teams of only women has ranged from 1.8% to 2.7%—we’re currently sitting at 1.9%) and involves creating environments where diverse entrepreneurs can thrive and access the financial resources necessary for their ventures.

Economic Advantage

Investing in women-led businesses isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s good business and smart economics. It's an undercapitalized, outperforming asset class: although women-led startups get much less funding than male-founded ones, they generate 10% more cumulative revenue, which creates financial security and an asset base for entire family groups and local economies. What attributes to this outperformance? Women focus more on unit economics and efficiency to counter receiving less funding, rank greater in communal tendencies (think: openness and collaboration), have a higher level of loss aversion, and tend to place lower emphasis on external motivations—like solely making money—and instead a stronger desire to contribute to society.

Education and Capacity Building

How can aspiring investors and founders come together to grow, fund, and champion the feminist businesses our world needs most if they don’t know where to start? We know that education is the solution to powering the full economic participation of women and gender-diverse people and eliminating gender disparity in financial knowledge. If women are educated at the same levels as men and hold the same number of jobs, there could be a $20 trillion boost to global economic growth by 2050.

We engage with our community in a learn-by-doing approach, and our sister company, Movement51, was born from the mission to accelerate capacity building.

Diverse Representation

True financial feminism acknowledges the need for diverse voices at decision-making tables. As of 2020, only about 11% of decision makers at Canadian VC firms were women. Knowing that investors who are women are twice as likely to fund other women founders and three times as likely to invest in women CEOs, it’s clear to see why prioritizing leadership that reflects a variety of perspectives is what will provide opportunities for all people to learn about and activate their investing and entrepreneurship potential.

Community and Championship

Connecting a movement of women investors, women entrepreneurs, and championing voices eager to support is how financial feminism thrives and catches momentum. It’s everyone’s responsibility to push the needle, so by building networks that uplift and advocate for financial feminism, that’s how we forge new partnerships, democratize access to capital for women and gender-diverse founders, and build the future we want to live in.

The51 Financial Feminist™ Economy

The51’s 2030 vision of building the Financial Feminist™ economy is meant to drive full-scale systems change, thereby maximizing women’s participation in the economy. The51 is on a mission to unlock women’s financial, human, and intellectual capital as investors, influential consumers, and corporate leaders diversifying supply chains.

Locally, 30% of Alberta’s tech startups founded or co-founded by women—these numbers are on our side as our province leads the nation in women’s entrepreneurship.

But this extends much farther than Alberta.

By uniting Canada’s untapped women’s wealth, we can create critical mass—making Canada the new centre for women-powered capital. We’re on our way to achieving this goal, but our vision expands globally.

By 2030, we want to see the rest of Canada catch up to Alberta, raising the percentage of women-founded startups from an average of 15% to 30%. Additionally, we want to see Canada increase financing for women-led startups by 30%, year over year.

Our community of influential feminist investors, innovators, and consumers are building the Financial Feminist™ economy.

What can you do next? How can you get involved?

• Join us by becoming a Financial Feminist member;

• Activate your capital as an investor;

• Build capacity and confidence with tailor-made programming with Movement51; or

• Sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date on plans, dates, and events happening within our ecosystem.

Let’s help Canada’s economy reach its full potential together.