Although the cannabis industry has become more widely accepted throughout the U.S., the number of companies led by women has not kept up.
According to the chief executive of Wana Brands, a female-led edibles company, a major part of this has to do with who gets the most funding: When women in the industry raise capital, their valuations can be 30% to 40% less than similar male-led companies, she said.
“They get a fraction of the capital in that case,” Nancy Whiteman, CEO of Wana Brands, told Yahoo Finance at the Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference (video above). “It’s a little disheartening. You have this brand new industry. You’d think that it really has the opportunity to set a new path but unfortunately at this point, it looks very much like a traditional industry.”
Across the U.S., 19.9% of cannabis businesses are owned by women, according to a report by MJ Biz Daily, and just 8% of all cannabis CEOs are women.
The MJ Biz report also found that 36.8% of executive positions in the cannabis industry were held by women in 2019. That number dropped to 22.1% in 2021. (The national average of women executives across all industries in 2020 was 29.8%.)
“Lack of access to capital remains a key challenge for women looking to start a plant-touching business, regardless of the market,” the report stated. [Read More @ Yahoo]
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