High School Vibes: My Personal Reflection on Female Business Culture
A quick note before we dive in: These are purely my personal observations and lived experiences of trying to be part of the female business culture. Everyone’s business journey is different, but this is an honest look at how I have found the dynamics of women’s business groups.
Let me be clear: I have close, wonderful female friends, and I enjoy women-only spaces for socialising. Where I have struggled is specifically within women-only business spaces.
After reading an article over the weekend about Monat Hair, a money-making scheme aimed at mums, I got wondering: How many women have had their lives turned upside down by female business culture?
Everyone is different, so why are women expected to join in with forced solidarity? Does ‘the sisterhood’ make us less guarded? Have we fallen for the ‘#WomenSupportingWomen’ hype?
Is female business culture, and the expectations that go with it, uplifting or traumatising?
For much of my career, I have worked and lived in London and Dubai. Since returning to Australia, I have found the female business culture here remarkably similar to being back at high school.
The ‘cool girls’ in the clique get all the claps, while the rest of us are left wondering why we are excluded.
As business owners, we all need connections and commercial backing, but those opportunities seem to go to the chosen few.
As the saying goes, ‘You can be the juiciest peach in the world, but not everyone likes peaches’ and that is fair enough.
But if we are claiming to be ‘#WomenSupportingWomen’ shouldn’t we be supporting ALL women in business, not just the chosen few?
As well as ‘#WomenSupportingWomen’, we have the booming ‘mumpreneur’ movement: an entire industry of meetups timed around school drop-offs, with podcasts celebrating the hustle of balancing toddler tantrums with client calls, telling you that ‘you can have it all!’.
A six-figure business working 10 hours a week sounds amazing, but is it realistic for everyone?
If a $2,000 course is all I need, sign me up! Cost of living crisis averted! 🎉
Mumpreneur – Where did the term come from?
The term ‘mumpreneur’ emerged in the 1990s to describe mothers balancing parenting with entrepreneurial ventures.
The term has changed over the years to its current state of being a marketing term and a lifestyle badge for a woman who earns money outside of regular employment.
It appears that we have 2 distinct Boxes – Kumbaya performative networking or domestic logistics?
Women are complex, so surely there should be more ‘boxes’?
What about the Solo Gen Xers? A demographic statistically vulnerable to housing insecurity, navigating business solo, and often uncomfortable with forced self-promotion or hustle culture? We often run our businesses as single operators, and our reality looks fundamentally different:
Cry me a river, right? 😂
I have expressed fatigue or burnout in the past and been hit with, ‘Imagine how tired you would be if you had kids!’. As if running a business solo without a financial safety net isn’t allowed to be exhausting! 😂
I have always wondered why it is acceptable to dismiss women without children in this way. Beyond ignoring the real financial pressures of solo operators, some women deal with fertility struggles, making those casual brush-offs deeply hurtful.
Why don’t we speak up?
A few years ago, I had a two-hour Zoom call ($180 AUD) with a service provider. At the start of the call, I became aware that a baby was sleeping under her desk and that her 4yr old son was in the room.
For 2hrs an energetic little boy focused on gaining his mum’s attention, including climbing on his mum and on her desk. The service provider didn’t see anything wrong with this situation, and at exactly 2 hours our session was over, and even tho the work was subpar, I said nothing.
Let’s be realistic: if a male corporate consultant sat down for a high-level B2B meeting with his kids crawling across his desk, we would rightly question his professional boundaries and readiness for work…
Straight talk vs. superficial networking
A few years ago, I was in a program run by Amanda Rose, founder of Entrepreneurful / ESBWA. She is a fierce advocate for women and small business owners without the superficial, fluffy BS.
Amanda is very supportive, but she doesn’t mince her words. Everyone is in business to earn a profit, build real commercial capability, and deliver outcomes.
Superficial compliments don’t pay our bills; don’t say yes if you want to say no.
In my opinion, a straight-talking, outcome-focused approach is far healthier than a lot of the rhetoric that we are told to believe.
Business is tough, life is tough, and running your own operations in Australia is brutal!
Why do we need so much trauma bonding?
This is another trend in female business culture that I find very uncomfortable: the expectation to publicly overshare intimate personal trauma as part of your business story.
Can’t you just create a business because you had an idea and you ran with it?
Why is dumping your trauma on other women required for connection? No thank you, I prefer to keep my trauma to myself! 😂
Like everyone who has lived a bit of life, I have plenty of rough stories in my rearview mirror.
Why are female founders expected to share horrific birth stories, relationship breakdowns, mental health or personal hardships just to prove they are authentic?
I am ADHD, married twice, and currently separated, so of course I have stories. But I would much rather put a pin in my eye than publicly share my personal, intimate life struggles on social media or at a networking breakfast just to make a sale or win sympathy claps.
In 2026, every small business owner I know is getting smashed by skyrocketing costs and bureaucracy. We are all scrambling to get through the current sh*tshow, navigating a life and economy that is testing even the most successful, established operators.
Can we please talk about that instead?
Free advice and unpaid invoices aren’t ‘support’
I lost count years ago of how many times women I barely know (or do not know at all) have reached out to ‘grab a coffee’ or ‘pick my brain’ under the guise of wanting to connect or collab, only for it to become blatantly clear they just wanted hundreds of dollars’ worth of technical advice for free. I have even had my advice rebranded as their own knowledge, without any acknowledgement that it was my expertise being quoted.
It is a fake show of solidarity used to exploit expertise, extract free work, and justify unpaid invoices.
Unpaid invoices with a side of personal drama…
In over thirty years of business, I have noticed a distinct difference in how men and women handle accounting.
If a man cannot pay an invoice on time, generally they blame cash flow or simply dodge your emails. While some women do the same, others decide to share issues that are not related to business at all.
I have completed the work, delivered the outcome, and rather than payment, I have received lengthy personal messages listing everything from a mother being in hospital (randomly, I met her mum later and she was fit as a fiddle!) to a bad week (as if expecting funds to magically appear in seven days to cover a large invoice makes sense…), anxiety, ADHD, PMS, perimenopause, or menopause. Pretty much any medical or personal situation gets used to explain why they cannot pay right now.
Why are personal life problems or health symptoms weaponised as an excuse to delay paying small business invoices?
If you hire a specialist, order a service, or sign a contract, you are entering a professional commercial agreement. I pay my invoices on time because I don’t hire people without having the funds set aside, and I don’t spend money that I know belongs to an outstanding bill.
Expecting a fellow female specialist to effectively finance your business or absorb late payments because you had a bad week isn’t ‘sisterhood’. It is unprofessional, and it forces another small business owner to carry your financial risk for work they completed in good faith.
If you cannot afford a service, that is your issue! Surely being part of ‘the sisterhood’ means caring about other women and respecting their livelihoods, rather than creating additional financial problems for them?
Real support is paying women for their expertise, hiring them, paying their invoices on time, and referring real, paying clients their way. Performative support is expecting a free masterclass or expecting an invoice to be waived because ‘we are both women in business’.
Where are the ‘#Dadpreneurs’ and ‘#DadsInBusiness’ groups?
The direct male equivalent of ‘mumpreneur’ is ‘dadpreneur’ (or ‘fatherpreneur’).
Notice how absurd and patronising ‘dadpreneur’ sounds in a B2B environment? Men running companies are simply called ‘business owners’ or ‘founders’. They are rarely categorised by their domestic or parenting duties when pitching for serious contracts, and you rarely see male agency directors gathering under hashtags like ‘#Dadpreneur’ or forming ‘Dads Who Do Tech’ networking circles.
Nobody slaps a label on men based on their parental or marital status. A man’s ability to do his job is evaluated purely on his competence, deliverables, and commercial performance.
Why must a woman’s business identity constantly be tied to her domestic status, her social presentation, or a curated hashtag?
Why I created South Coast Women and why it’s taken me a year for a reboot
Last year I experienced firsthand the damage that can be done by supportive performance.
I spoke about South Coast Women for the first time publicly in March 2025 and was given a great deal of encouragement. Women insisted they couldn’t wait to be part of it right up until I spent six months hyperfocused on building the darn thing.
When it was ready to launch Phase 1, I reached out to a hand-picked group of 20 who had explicitly expressed interest in being founding members. Over a year later, I still haven’t received a reply to my SMS messages or DMs! Of that group, 4 created profiles and 2 created a business listing.
The total revenue to date for South Coast Women is $230 minus payment processor fees.
A monumental #fail, and a massive waste of months of work, my skills, and my money, but an excellent lesson in performative enthusiasm versus fact.
Whilst the ‘supporters’ felt good sharing words of encouragement, I made decisions based on empty promises. The burden of those decisions is mine alone.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete the platform from my server, but I also don’t want to put my heart into it either, so I have reworked the platform into a free search directory (you can read the story of why I pivoted from social to search).
I am using the platform to test new features for a new platform while providing a free advertising option for women who want to list themselves. Shoalhaven Short Stay: I should have the platform live by the end of August 2026.
Until next time,
Fractional Tech Partner & Systems Specialist
P.S. If you are a woman in business and located on the South Coast of NSW and would like a free listing, you can add your details to 👉 South Coast Women. It costs nothing, takes a few minutes to set up, and is there for anyone who wants to find or hire local female specialists directly.
