Teaching with the third wave new feminists - MailChimp

Keeping up a dual activity is obviously linked to another aspect that weshare with other female entrepreneurs, namely the lack of funding. To over comethe financial barrier, we chose the low risk option of self-funding supported byour paid employment. It is important to highlight that this alternative wasfeasible because our activity requires only a small investment in money. Indeed,what we really invested in our partnership was a lot of time and energy and ahuge amount of intellectual effort.Like so many female business initiators, we were confronted with thedilemma of self-doubt. In our case this insecurity covered a wide range ofissues: from questioning our professional capacities to offering quality serviceswithin an unknown environment (such as private enterprises); over doubtingour credibility; to fearing the loss of our feminist convictions.These apprehensions and fears also determined the legal status of ourproject, as we decided to create a non-profit organization rather than a properconsulting firm. In the French context, this solution contains lower financialrisks and, consequently, it implies fewer obligations in terms of the durationand profitability of the activity. In sum, when we finally took the decisive step,we did it with almost no risks. In that case, why did it take us more than oneyear before we really dared to ‘take the plunge’?The Two Faces of Janus: Being a PhD Candidate and Business CreatorProbably because we were tackling one more (major) problem, arising from ourparticular situation as young French academics; that of locating and positioningour-selves simultaneously inside and outside academia. Indeed, we wereboth PhD candidates, still in training within the university and also alreadyfull professionals (although beginners) in training people outside the academy.Why did we then find this problematic? For three main reasons: the first one islinked to the French university system and to its training objectives; the secondis connected to academia’s relations with the private market and companies;the third is the result of these two previous points, visible in terms of variousresistances.The French PhD training is very much focused on careers within thehigher education sector and research and it does not really prepare people forjobs outside academia. Although quite a lot of self-employed consultants havea university background, there is not much information available within the115