Business Women Losing Their Foothold in Mainstream Marijuana

“More sophisticated money is coming into the space, and with that comes all of the trappings and all of the challenges for women,” said Shanel Lindsay, who founded a medical-marijuana device maker called Ardent in Boston.

In the pot industry, the share of start-ups owned by women is shrinking, even as female entrepreneurs thrive in small businesses overall. Two years ago, women made up 36 percent of executives in cannabis-related companies, about average for small businesses as a whole. This year, the percentage of women entrepreneurs was unchanged, but female pot executives dropped to 27 percent, a survey by Marijuana Business Daily found.

It’s not entirely clear why women occupy a shrinking share of leadership roles in the cannabis field. It’s expensive to obtain a license to grow, manufacture or sell weed products in many states where it’s legal. It’s also difficult, if not impossible, to obtain traditional banking services or financing for anything that touches the plant, because it’s still federally illegal. Those factors favor entrepreneurs with more money to start with, and that’s often men.

The growing interest from big-money investors from Silicon Valley and Wall Street may also give men an advantage. Academic research suggests that investors prefer business pitches presented by male entrepreneurs compared with pitches by female entrepreneurs, even when the pitch is the same. Start-ups run by women are usually questioned about potential losses, while those run by men are asked about potential gains, according to a study published earlier this year in the Harvard Business Review.

Krista Whitley started a marketing firm that specializes in cannabis companies and products in 2015 with one investor. Her company, Altitude Products, has since expanded to other pot-related business lines, and in January, she tried to raise another round of capital. The process, she said, was characterized by “amazing misogyny.”

“One investor in particular told me he thought it was cute that I wanted to make money,” she said. “Men don’t get told that in the middle of their fundraising pitches.”

Eventually Whitley found another investor. Last year, her company had $1 million in revenue. This year, she expects to hit $10 million.