Economia Social i Solidària

Gina Planas:

Welcome to Voices from the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE), the new podcast on social and collaborative economies.

As you may remember, in the previous episode, we reflected on the role of ethical finance and its purpose in promoting business projects that are struggling to obtain funding.

In this second episode, we want to take a look at the world of entrepreneurship in the social and solidarity economy from a woman’s perspective. In other words, we want to find out what starting a business entails for women, whether it involves undertaking a new project or continuing to run and grow an initiative that is already operational, in the solidarity economy world. We'll also share with our listeners the municipal resources available to support such development. To help us discuss this topic in depth we are joined today by Ernest Pons and Andrea Balletbó.

Ernest has worked in various organisations in the social and solidarity economy and driven various cooperative initiatives. He currently works in Barcelona Activa's Department of Socio-Economic Innovation and, among other things, is in charge, of the “Camí de la Solidesa” and “Construïm en Femení” programmes. Both programmes are tailored to strengthening SSE initiatives run and led by women, and already have a number of editions behind them – seven and six, respectively. Since the start, they have been involved in over 200 SSE projects, with almost 400 women taking part. Ernest also has a five-year-old son. 

Andrea Balletbó is a partner and consultant at Tandem Social, a non-profit social initiative work cooperative that runs the above-mentioned programmes. She has also been an entrepreneur since 2015. When she first became a partner at Tandem Social, she helped establish the cooperative restaurant Sopa de Pedres. She has also been joint leader of several entrepreneurship projects as part of her work with Tandem, and she has two children: three-year-old Emma and five-year-old Martí.
Welcome both, and thank you very much for coming.

Let’s start with you, Ernest, if that’s okay. Can you tell us what services Barcelona Activa offers women to help them start their own business?

Ernest Pons:

Hi, and thank you for asking us to take part in this podcast. First, I’d like to say that I'm speaking on behalf of a larger team but that the reason it's me who's here today is because I've been involved from the beginning in creating those programmes you just mentioned, and also because of my previous experience advising entrepreneurs, most of whom were women, actually.

Right, “Camí de la Solidesa” and “Construïm en Femení” are two programmes run by us from the Department of Socio-Economic Innovation, and talking about them may help people understand exactly what we mean by "female entrepreneurship" in the context of the social and solidarity economy, and the challenges it can pose. They are programmes that last between five and six months, and combine training with individual and group advice sessions, with around 15 initiatives taking part, free of charge, in each edition. 

Gina Planas:

What is the candidate profile of these programmes you mentioned, “Camí de la Solidesa” and “Construïm en Femení”?

Ernest Pons:

Well, if it's a woman or group of women who are starting a project in the social and solidarity economy or want to get involved in one, “Construïm en Femení” helps them with planning every aspect involved in the entrepreneurial process. “Camí de la Solidesa”, on the other hand, is aimed at organisations, i.e. cooperative companies or entities with an economic activity that have been operating for a while but want to improve their social entrepreneurial strategy and address specific challenges in any area, in accordance with social and solidarity economy values, of course.

We believe that the strength of both programmes, each of which is aimed at a specific profile, lies in combining intensive support with trying to adapt to the reality of each participant by forming part of a group of women, something that we see as a strong point and which, above all, facilitates collective empowerment and collaborative learning. 

Gina Planas:

And how exactly can these programmes be linked to the gender perspective in entrepreneurship and the business world?

Ernest Pons:

After listening to participants' needs and opinions, and seeing the economic context and evolution of the social and solidarity economy, we have gradually adapted these programmes and the department’s services in general.

On the one hand, we decided to go for more flexible and tailored formats. In fact, we have adapted the most recent editions of “Camí” and “Construïm” to include those needs that we had identified or been told about. 

By providing one-to-one and home-based support, we try to respond to each participant's own unique needs, pace, capabilities, and so on. We believe that in the social and solidarity economy there should be room for all aspects of society. Otherwise, it will not have a transformative effect. And this ties in with something that I used to explain a lot when I taught entrepreneurship courses in schools, which is that many people are not aware that they've already started enterprising, in some cases because they had no choice. For example, you could say that this applies to a migratory process, even to parenting, to the promotion of association projects or even to activism. Even decorating your street for the annual festival could be considered enterprising. In the end it's all about planning, weighing up the pros and cons, increasing your resilience, networks, etc.

And women have traditionally been experts at a lot of this.

However, this obviously doesn't mean that starting a business is for everyone. 

Gina Planas:

And now I'd like to welcome Andrea. What are your thoughts based on your professional experience at Tandem Social and after supporting these initiatives? Do you agree? Would you add any key aspects?

Andrea Balletbó:

Hi, morning everybody, and thank you so much for asking us to take part in this podcast.

Well, at Tandem Social we've had the opportunity in the last 10 years to help design and implement programmes to support and foster entrepreneurship within the framework of the social and solidarity economy, specifically in relation to services for women, both in Catalonia and elsewhere in Spain. This has provided us with a fairly accurate view of participants' needs as regards the process of starting a business, which have been perfectly described by Ernest.

As a society, we actually face many challenges when it comes to achieving gender equality, such as inequality in an aspect of life that is key to people's well-being: care and reproductive tasks in general.

Gina Planas:

Just to make sure everyone is on the same wavelength: what do you mean by “reproductive tasks”?

Andrea Balletbó:

"Reproductive tasks" are all the unremunerated tasks related to housework and caring for others. 

These tasks are still mainly undertaken by women. In fact, according to the Time Use Survey carried out by the Catalan government, women on average spend almost twice as much time per day as men on housework and looking after their family. It really is a very worrying figure. But what the survey doesn't mention is what the psychological consequences of this reality are. Some female authors talk about women's quadruple work load: paid work, housework, emotional work and mentally managing it all. 

In these programmes we encounter women with a very high – excessively high – mental and emotional load. If you add to this the fact that, for the mere fact of being women, they already have to deal with more obstacles in the entrepreneurship process, more difficulties accessing funding, a lack of female role models, and the pressure of being compared to the aggressive and ambitious white male entrepreneur stereotype, an already difficult path becomes a practically titanic effort.

When we carry out these programmes, we therefore consider it very important for participants to share the obstacles they encounter and build a network to overcome them by means of co-construction sessions that help us, through a community of women, increase their self-confidence and self-esteem and find concrete solutions for each entrepreneurial process. 

They are fully focused on the practical aspects. Our work is not limited to discussing or merely sharing: we use this to find, together, concrete proposals to be implemented in each case. 

Gina Planas:

There are clearly many challenges ahead of us but tell us as well about… Because I imagine there must also be many opportunities for women in the field of entrepreneurship, obvious ones too, aren't there?

Andrea Balletbó:

Indeed there are. We women do play a key role in the field of entrepreneurship that should pervade every business and every organisation in general. Our ability to empathise, multi-task, work and overcome obstacles, the need to put life at the centre, our tendency to cooperate... Although these are partly legacies of the patriarchal society, they are also essential when it comes to driving and managing socio-economic initiatives. 

We ourselves are often guilty of not believing that we're as good as anyone else when it comes to doing anything we set out to do, and we let this huge historical burden tell us otherwise, but the social and solidarity economy has many examples of very successful social entrepreneurship projects driven and run by women. This is another element we bring into our programmes: we identify initiatives that inspire participants, both in terms of the sustainability model and through the female entrepreneur(s) who carried them out. We share challenges, good practices and cases of failure so we can learn from each other, gain momentum and encourage mutual cooperation because, when you see that someone who's just like you has achieved what you want to do, your motivation increases manyfold.

Gina Planas:

We women need to believe more in ourselves.

Ernest, just in case any current or future female entrepreneurs are listening, which we hope they are, how can they sign up for one of these courses or programmes?

Ernest Pons:

Well, for any programme, they need to apply during the application period, which is before the start of each edition, and each programme has its own selection criteria. This applies, for example, to the “Camí” and “Construïm” projects, which we were just talking about and which are aimed at women, with the differences between them that we've already explained, and to “Reimaginem”, which we know is a programme that's open to both men and women from organisations and companies that are already operating but who want to review what they're doing and try making changes. But for anyone wanting to find out more about the exact criteria and ask any other questions, it's a good idea to check the website or take part in the information sessions we hold, which we advertise in the monthly Social and Solidarity Economy Newsletter.

Gina Planas:

Thanks – I've made a note of it. And now, to end this first section and give way to the participants of the most recent editions of the Camí and CoFem projects, are there any other thoughts either of you would like to add?

Andrea Balletbó:

Now you mention it, yes. I'd like to share with you one final thing I'm sure about: entrepreneurship of the present and the future will either be feminist or it won't exist at all. It is essential that companies, organisations, public institutions and society in general incorporate feminism and care as a cross-cutting and strategic pillar.

I'd like to illustrate this with a personal anecdote. Earlier this month I took my young son to preschool, where he's still in the adaptation period, and chatting to the other mothers – the vast majority of us were mothers – I really got very angry when they explained that their bosses, who were men, hadn't allowed them to work more flexible hours for this process, which is so important in a child's life. "My boss doesn't like holidays. He doesn't like me to be off sick or on leave...", they said. Our work and reproductive lives must be strategically constructed as a whole, and we can't afford to, and shouldn't, make one subject to the other.

One of the most important aspects of Tandem Social for me, also as a woman, is that we have completely flexible hours. Of course we have to respond to our female collaborators' needs, which is why we're here in the first place, but they each manage their own time and, if there's ever a problem balancing their work and personal lives, we try to find a solution together, as a group. 

Gina Planas:

A good example for many cooperatives and companies. Ernest, any final thoughts to add?

Ernest Pons:

Well, along the same lines as what Andrea was saying, I think one of the challenges facing not just the social and solidarity economy but also public authorities at another level is to ensure that we practice what we preach on care to try to prevent people from getting themselves into precarious employment situations, and I'm not just talking about remuneration. That's why it's so important to find tools, mechanisms and settings for reviewing and trying to improve the balance between the various aspects of starting or running a business rather than focusing only on the financial side. It has to sustainable in accordance with each person's circumstances and needs in life.

And finally, another issue for me is how to incorporate and improve certain feminist values or approaches for men in the social and solidarity economy too, a huge challenge that we also face in the mixed resources we promote, such as the “Reimaginem” programme I mentioned before, which only just started this September.

This is important in order to ensure that the feminist perspective is taken into account, as mentioned earlier by Andrea, as a strategic matter for companies and organisations in industries with fewer women. And not just for those that define themselves as such or that are made up exclusively of women. 

Gina Planas:

So we finish with this message of hope: that, together, between groups, organisations and the public and business sectors, this feminist perspective will gradually be incorporated because, as mentioned by Andrea, the entrepreneurship of the future will either be feminist or it won't exist at all.

Thank you very much, Ernest and Andrea, for sharing your experiences and reflections. Now let’s hand the mic over to Ernest to lead the chat part of the podcast.

***

Ernest Pons:

Thanks very much, Gina. 

In our programmes, we have discussed the organisational aspect in greater depth as a differential value compared to the more commercial economy. This includes both the strategic aspects of governance, decision-making, etc., and other aspects that are more closely related to daily care to make work more compatible and, above all, sustainable with other aspects of life and on a more practical and operational level, to organise work in the best possible way.

Everything is interrelated, and therein lies the key to the long-term survival of any social and solidarity economy initiative as well as small projects in the traditional economy. There is also a need in the social and solidarity economy to form networks as a strategy from which to grow and survive in an economy and a society in which surviving alone would be harder.

This is why we're lucky to have the testimony of three former programme participants who can tell us first-hand about their experience. First we have Cristina, from Ökollective, an initiative of “Construïm en Femení”. 

Cristina Clemente:

Hello, Ernest.

Good morning. We're Claudia and Cristina. We're a design studio and a project for the transformation of the fashion industry, because we've worked in this industry for many years in the traditional, hegemonic and patriarchal way. It's ultimately a working method that, in our view, is weak and unsustainable in the long term.

Our proposal is to develop a project with several lines of action. One of them takes the form of workshops, where we give people tips and help them repair and transform their clothes to make them last longer. We also want to work with fashion brands to help them divert textile waste from being put in landfill, which will soon be forbidden. And we also wanted to help them put in place repair programmes in which we'd like social workshops to get involved. There are a few of these in Barcelona, for example, and we'd love to work in partnership with them. We've already been in contact with them, and it's something we'd love to achieve in the future.

The next thing we want to do after that is make our own brand of clothes, always using textile waste and partly to teach people about all the things you can do with it.

Ernest Pons:

We also have another Cristina, one of the founders of Club Amica, who also took part in this year's “Construïm en femení” programme. Hi.

Cristina Gómez:

Hi, Ernest. 

So yes, I'm the other Cristina and, together with my partner Charlie, who couldn't be here today, I run a new enterprise that we launched during the pandemic and that... Well, we always laugh about the fact that we decided to start a social and therapy club right in the middle of the pandemic, when we weren't allowed to meet people in person. But anyway, this project has survived over these years.

The project was conceived as a collective proposal based on a set of needs and dreams that were very personal but that we eventually realised are actually common to many women, which are having access to a safe and exclusive space where we can share, grow, heal and learn, and also where the ways we do things, our rhythms and our needs take priority and are taken into account.

Amica is... Amica is not just a therapy facility: it's a constantly growing collaborative community that offers products and services all of which, although varied, relate to women's health and well-being, and our aim is to promote and highlight the importance of care, particularly self-care.

Ernest Pons:

Thank you very much.
 
And finally we have Andrea from Metzineres. 

Andrea Gaetano:

Hi, how are you?

I'm from Metzineres. Metzineres is the first non-profit cooperative aimed at cis and trans women and non-binary people, provided they do not identify as men, who use drugs and are living with violence and many types of vulnerabilities.

Metzineres was created from XADUD, the Network of Women Drug Users, as a result of a study carried out in 2016. They would meet in the afternoons to talk about the needs and claims of female drug users. Certain needs started to emerge from here, leading to what is now Metzineres. So the Metzineres project started in 2017 as a result of this.

And we've been a cooperative since 2020. During all this time, we've tried to build this women's cooperative and increase our strength as such. All the people who work here are also women and, when I say "women", I also mean non-binary people and anyone who doesn't identify as a man.

Metzineres currently works through shelters. All this which - again - was born from XADUD in 2016/2017, these shelters cover certain holistic and interrelated aspects in which women are assigned to different services based on what they want and what they need. Some relate to care, others to activism, others are about community action, art... Productive workshops are held on the basis of these, some of them led by the women being helped by Metzineres themselves, as an initial form of labour inclusion.

Several of us at the Metzineres team are professionals, and there are also participants who do 38.5 hours' paid work a week, just like everyone else, which is really interesting because you get to work more in depth and with peers, resulting in a very interesting and enriching mechanism for everyone involved. Of those of us who are professionals, many of us lack life experience, so these women contribute all the knowledge, because in the end they're the ones who know the most about their own realities and how to resolve conflict, and they have tools that we professionals don't usually have. 

So there, in this whole women's holistic approach medley, is Metzineres, which is constantly changing because we're always transforming ourselves as needs arise, but with very clear goals and a very specific mission, vision and values. And one of our main aims is to fight against stigma and discrimination and work from there.

Ernest Pons:

Thank you very much to all three of you for sharing your experiences. As you can see, as you can hear, they are very different examples, but what they all have in common is that they seek a social transformation, and that leads to the question of how the programme you took part in helped you, what it provided you with, bearing in mind both what you were telling us just now and this approach to female entrepreneurship that we were talking about at the start of the podcast, with specific examples. Cristina? 

Cristina Clemente:

Well, we contacted Construïm en Femení mainly because even just the name seemed interesting to us and, in addition, we thought it could give us the keys to develop the project we had in mind, and we were right.

For now we are legally a non-profit cooperative that also operates in the social and solidarity economy, and this really was the best way we could find to reflect our values and so on. And then there was also the feminist perspective, which we hadn't thought about before. To give you an example: we've now been around for almost three months and Claudia has a child, so we need to manage our schedules and our work-life balance. It's also to some extent thanks to the programme that we've learned that there are other ways to do things, and it's really working for us.

Anyway, I'll let someone else talk.

Ernest Pons:

Thank you very much for telling us about this case.

Cristina Gómez:

Well, in our case, I think that, since its creation in 2020, this view of doing things from a female perspective was already fully part of the Amica Club so, when we found out about this programme, about its name, we felt as if it was made for us. That's how we felt.

What it gave us above all was the ability to come back down to earth and sort out our ideas. It was a very ambitious project and we didn't know how to carry it out. They gave us lots of tools and made us think about many aspects that we hadn't been able to think about properly before and see how we could make this project viable and sustainable without losing its essence.

Ernest Pons:

And Andrea, as part of a cooperative like Metzineres, which includes many more people, at one point took part in the “Camí de la Solidesa” project and, in fact, is now taking part in another programme, “Reimaginem”, what can you tell us?

Andrea Gaetano:

Well, it was really important for Metzineres, starting with Camí de la Solidesa, which I think was the project that first brought us into contact with Barcelona Activa. It was important because it gave us the necessary tools to structure a few things, such as our mission, vision and values, how to start thinking of everything in the form of our own cooperative and work with various tools that we could then incorporate into our daily work with the women taking part in the programme.

Camí de la Solidesa was then fully involved in the cooperative from that moment, from its construction process. They were the ones who gave us the tools, the drive... We had come from very far away: coming from XADUD, our origin was in the grassroots and, at the time, taking part in this programme was key to the development of Metzineres. In addition, the network we were able to set up with other groups, other cooperatives, was also very useful, and we always tried to work on boosting our position within the framework of the social and solidarity economy. So you always feel very supported knowing and working with partners who support you in taking certain paths.

And well, we're now also in this advisory process, in this process of improving certain things, of growing as a cooperative too: in recent years we've grown loads in terms of the number of people working with us, the number of members of the cooperative. And this is thanks to the support provided by these programmes.

And, as to the reason for the feminist organisation angle, it's because, in my opinion, this kind of approach is key in order for us to work, because there are loads of male-dominated spaces, so we also aim to take care of these spaces that are not male-dominated and to try to preserve them and work from the point of view of intersectional feminism.

Ernest Pons:

Many thanks. I think you’ve explained it very clearly. 

Could you also please briefly tell us what you think your main challenge is right now? In other words, as of now, right now, what's going on, what issues are you facing?

Since we were talking to you, Andrea…

Andrea Gaetano:

One of our main challenges is to put an end to stigma and discrimination by working hard for a world in which what works is intersectional feminism, and our main aim is to achieve cooperativism and the social and solidarity economy at a very macro level. 

If you want to know about Metzineres' specific mission, I could be more precise. Er... Just a moment...

Ernest Pons:

Cristina from Club Amica, to alternate a bit and to continue with the discussion, could you also please tell us what you think is your main challenge in the immediate future?

Cristina Gómez:

Yes, well, we face many challenges. 

Although Amica started in 2020, it has developed very slowly, but I think this has partly been a good thing, because we're working from a feminist point of view, building everything up in a way that fits around our lives and personal needs and giving priority to how we feel at any given time and in relation to our family lives, our children's needs and so on. So we go at our own pace, with great respect for each other, and our specific challenge is to be able to continue with this project and put in all the hours and energy it requires and make it work with our lives too, because we're still mothers, we're still working, and we still have responsibilities that we can't just give up, so we have to find a way to juggle it all.

Cristina Clemente:

In our case, our challenge right now is, on the one hand, to make the project sustainable; i.e. to take home a decent and stable salary. That's one thing. And, on the other, to work with fashion companies and introduce them to the circular and sustainable world... And this is the real challenge, of course, because everything is very stereotyped and they already work in a particular way, but we'll try to somehow make things change and... Well, that's the main challenge, and the big achievement will be when we land a contract with a big company.

Ernest Pons:

Thank you. Remember that Ökollective operates in the textile industry.

Cristina Clemente:

Yes, exactly.

Ernest Pons:

Which is not like other industries.

Let's go back to the conversation with Andrea from Metzineres.

Andrea Gaetano:

Yes, sorry.

Well, our mission at Metzineres is to promote communities that ensure full access to women's rights, well-being and pleasure, always fighting and working against stigma and discrimination as key... as key pillars of what we're all about. And the rest is basically to get the world to operate from the perspective of feminism and the social and solidarity economy.

Ernest Pons:

Finally, just to finish, and since today we’ve talked about the importance of being part of a group in these programmes, which we also believe can empower participants, how important do you think is the fact of having created, or did you manage to create, a community with the other participants? Or what do you think you got out of it at the time?

Cristina Clemente:

Well, taking part in a programme such as this, where you're surrounded by women and all their concerns, hopes and projects, creates synergies and quite a pleasant atmosphere. It makes you see that you're not alone, you know?

So getting to know about these cases close to us as well as others in the social economy - of which there are many - well, we fall in love with every new one we learn about. We've realised that change can only be achieved by working as a group. 

Ernest Pons:

Cristina, is there anything you'd like to add? In your case...?

Cristina Gómez:

Well, I didn't go to the classes in person, so I sort of missed out on that part, but whenever we did meet I felt all this: this energy and these great vibes. And seeing that this is real, not a utopia, being able to see the other women as colleagues or possible collaborators, as friends or as companions in your journey, even if their project is entirely different from yours. In the end you share admiration, respect, with all of them.

And this business of seeing everything as competition and other people as a source of danger, as enemies, thinking that they're going to take something away from you... all this disappears. In other words, when you see the relationships and dynamics, you realise it's completely viable: it's not a utopia.

Ernest Pons:

And Andrea, in your case at Metzineres?

Andrea Gaetano:

Well, I agree to some extent with the other people at this table, but the relationship with other similar organisations who also work from a feminist perspective is key, because promoting something together is always better if you're working for a slightly more feminist world. It is therefore key and, in my opinion, really important for all aspects of collective construction.

Ernest Pons:

Well, thank you very much. 

Thank you to Cristina, Andrea and Cristina for taking the time to talk to us. We'd also like you to know that we're very happy to be able to support such powerful initiatives as Metzineres, Ökollective and Club Amica, as well as many others that are receiving support and want to show that the social and solidarity economy is a reality.

Cristina Clemente:

Thank you very much. We'll see you in the social economy.

Cristina Gómez:

Thank you. 

Andrea Gaetano:

Thanks for everything.

***

Gina Planas:

Today we’ve reflected on what it means to start a business as a woman, and we've opened up a very interesting discussion on the differences between doing so in the social and solidarity economy and in the traditional economy. We’ve also talked about the free services provided by Barcelona Activa to help all women wishing to start a business and to include the feminist perspective in every organisation.

All that's left to do before we finish is thank each and every person who has taken part in today's podcast, as well as all our listeners, both those who are joining us for the first time and those who are already starting to become loyal listeners.

We hope you've enjoyed the experiences that have been shared here today. Remember that you can listen to Voices from the Social and Solidarity Economy on SoundCloud or on the Social and Solidarity Economy website. We also encourage you to sign up for our monthly newsletter, where you will find a link to the description of the podcast so you can always find out the deadlines for grants and for the municipal programmes and activities provided by Barcelona City Council. 

We hope you’ll join us for our next podcast.

See you soon!