Andrea Ippolito, SimpliFed - New York

Want to fix the gender diversity gap in entrepreneurship? Focus on supporting female entrepreneurs who are starting a family. Sure, there are mentorship programs, female-focused incubators, books and podcasts to “lean in” or “lean out.” But how about policies supporting parents so they can actually found and grow companies, to ultimately diminish inequities in entrepreneurship.

Did you know the average startup founder is in their early 40s? And why are they mostly men? Because by the time a future entrepreneur cuts their teeth, builds the expertise, saves up to bootstrap, they’re right at the baby-rearing age window. And, by that “baby time” (let’s call it that, say) there are new choices that need to be made by women.

Women don’t have to make the same choices and considerations as men when deciding to start a family, I don’t care what you say.

How do I know? Because I’m doing it right now as a founder of a pre-seed company and a parent of a 3-year-old and 3-week-old, and it’s freaking hard. To prove it, I’m actually writing this in the old-fashioned way, by the sole “candlelight” on my cell phone in the Google Docs app, while feeding my daughter at 4 a.m.

Female-founded startups are not just a good thing to do in practice, they also deliver better financial outcomes. Pitchbook/All Raise and BCG have all done studies on it: Investing in women isn’t philanthropy, it is good business sense. We know that diversity within an organization is associated with more innovation, improved decision-making, higher revenue per dollar invested, and improved financial returns.

As someone who works with some of the most brilliant student entrepreneurs around as the Program Lead of Women Entrepreneurs (WE) Cornell, I know that it’s not that women in college or right out of university can’t be entrepreneurs (in fact that’s a whole other topic that I believe in strongly — check out my testimony at the Small Business Committee in Congress here), it’s that you increase probability of success when you have someone with experience, access to customers/networks/capital, and the confidence to tackle it.

However, the issue is that there are not enough policies and systems in place to help support women thriving as an entrepreneur once they start having kids, so the reality is that women don’t get over the initial hurdle of founding a company.

This country deserves more, should do more, and can do more. Let’s support women and babies with paid parental leave and universal childcare support, which are both articulated in the American Families Plan proposed by the Biden administration.

If we want to increase the number of female entrepreneurs, this is the way to do it. If we want to tackle large societal issues with more financial success and jobs for our nation’s economy, let’s better support and take advantage of half of our population.

Andrea Ippolito is founder of SimpliFed, and a leader in entrepreneurship and health tech. She is also the program lead of Women Entrepreneurs (WE) Cornell, and has testified before the Small Business Committee in Congress.

This OpEd was originally published in CrunchBase