Is the term 'mumpreneur' doing business women a disservice?

As the word 'mumpreneur' enters the dictionary, Rebecca Jones discusses whether the term is having a negative impact on the perception of business women.

The eleventh edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published on 6 October and the word 'mumpreneur' was listed for the first time. Now I'm a mum, all be it of older kids of 12 and 20, and for all but a few years of my adult life I have been a business owner. I often introduce myself as a business owner when at work, as a mum at children's events, socially just as Rebecca and sometimes as a wife or daughter of... Never have I felt the need to combine my job title and my life as a mum nor would I ever suggest I am an entrepreneur. Yet the word mumpreneur seems to be extremely popular with women who are business owners and mums. 

Entrepreneurs have commented at the bottom of this article with their reaction to this issue. To view the comments, register and log in. Here's one comment in favour of the term 'mumpreneur' written by Suzanne Dibble, founder of Lawyers 4 Mumpreneurs.

"A very interesting article Rebecca. What does being a mumpreneur mean? The dictionary definition was “a mother who combines bringing up children with running a company”. To me, it is more than that – it means you are fitting your business around your children, working from home without childcare. The doctors, dentists and hairdressers that Rebecca mentions presumably don’t have their offspring running around them whilst they are seeing patients or cutting hair. Mums who have childcare and go off to work outside of the home are not, in my view, mumpreneurs – they are indeed simply business women who have children. They don’t have the same needs and requirements as the mums who are literally fitting their work into naptimes, evening and weekends or whilst the children are playing in the kitchen as they work.

"The ‘real’ mumpreneurs are a distinct business group with their own set of needs and requirements. And as a response to this, a fantastic community and support group has evolved. Mumpreneur networking groups (such as Mums The Boss) hold events at times avoiding the school run and in venues that offer childcare facilities. New work spaces (such as Third Door) are springing up to provide flexible working facilities with on-site childcare. Mumpreneur conferences (such as the Mumpreneur Conference) are being held to provide advice and support tailored to mumpreneurs.

"From a lawyer’s perspective, mumpreneurs have their own requirements and needs in the provision of legal services. For example, mumpreneurs find it easier and less intimidating to deal with a lawyer like me who won’t mind if there is a crying baby in the background rather than deal with a middle aged man in a pinstriped suit in a city office who might not have quite the same empathy if little Harry starts screaming again… Mumpreneurs need to work flexibly around the demands of their children, so they like the fact that I am happy to schedule calls in the evening and at the weekend. Perhaps most importantly, mumpreneur businesses are in the main, small, self funded businesses and mumpreneurs need affordable legal advice with certainty as to the legal fee. I keep my fees affordable and offer fixed fees wherever I can, something that not many lawyers are prepared to do. Finally, because I work almost exclusively with mumpreneur businesses, which do tend to be of a similar nature, I am already very familiar with the legal issues and know exactly what is important to a mumpreneur and what is not.

"Female entrepreneurs who don't like the term (and these are typically the mums who I would refer to as business women who have childcare and work outside of the home and therefore not in my opinion ‘real‘ mumpreneurs) don’t see why they should be labelled as a subsection of business and think that the term is demeaning to them, making their business seem more ‘hobby like’ and less professional. That might be a perception, but a lot of my mumpreneur clients are building fantastic businesses that any entrepreneur would be proud of. And for many mumpreneurs, success is not about building up their business to a million pound turnover. It is about being successfully balancing spending time with their children whilst still having something for them and keeping them intellectually stimulated and if that means that their business is kept to a small scale and ‘hobby-like’, so be it.

"But I think the most important point to make here is that the mumpreneurs I work with don’t refer to themselves as mumpreneurs in their everyday dealings – it is just a useful term when looking for networking groups, conferences etc. They don't introduce themselves and say "hi, I'm a mumpreneur!".  I use the word ‘mumpreneur’ in my business name because it attracts the people who I want to help - as a mum who has set up her own business to work around children, I know how hard it is. But other than when I am working with mumpreneurs (where a bit of empathy is beneficial to the working relationship) I don’t advertise the fact that I am working around my baby and I still offer my clients the same top quality service that I did when I was working at global law firm DLA Piper. I’m similarly sure that a mumpreneur going to pitch at John Lewis wouldn’t introduce themselves as a mumpreneur or advertise the fact that they work around their children.

"And as to whether mumpreneurs take their businesses seriously, well I guess my business wouldn’t be successful if they didn’t (and it is!) as a willingness to spend money on legal fees to ensure that things are done properly is always a good indication as to how seriously people take their businesses…"