Stella Mally is a 33 years old Director of Women's Economy Europe, a Social Entrepreneur, who strongly believes in the impact of social enterprises. In her presentation today at Women Economic Forum, she highlighted the concepts of social enterprise.
Elaborating on the same she said that there are three concepts of social enterprise, Social service provision, Social activism and Social entrepreneurship. While she asserts that Social service provision and Social activism are indirect and direct respectively; Social entrepreneurship is transforming.
According to Stella, Successful sustainable model for change, Scaled solution and Collaborative approach are the three keys responsible for social enterprise to make a difference. Expanding on women and social enterprises, she said that women are running more social enterprises than mainstream businesses. She went on saying that women are more participatory and innovative.
Revealing the negatives she said, "Even today women at large get to face a lot of discrimination in terms of the work they get because of the stereotypical notion that prevails. When you talk about a woman being in a social enterprise, you think of her social angle more leaving the business prospect that she brings forward along with it. Women are considered timid whereas we can run a business along with a social propaganda and earn profits for the same. " Gender pay gap is another disadvantage for women working in social enterprises.
Other barriers that Stella emphasized on are lack of time, lack of understanding and difficulty to have access to the right networks. "High accountability, high bureaucracy are some of the positives in social enterprises," she stated.
The main purpose behind Stella's work is to empower more women and support them both economically and socially. Other than being an international relations professional, she is also a voluntary trainer for women entrepreneur mentors and a mentor for women entrepreneurs.
