Entrepreneurship can narrow the gender pay gap, but it’s not a perfect solution.

A couple weeks ago, economic historian and labor economist Claudia Goldin won the Nobel prize for economics for her research into the gender pay gap: why it started, and why it persists. Goldin has looked at how women who have children are forced to give up jobs with long hours and higher pay for jobs with more flexibility and less pay.

After the prize was announced, Madeline Reeves, a small business owner, wrote to Marketplace with some thoughts on the subject. Specifically, that starting a business can be one way for women in certain fields and with certain skills to get both the pay and the flexibility they deserve.

But even if entrepreneurship can be a solution, Reeves said it’s an imperfect one.

Back in 2018, Reeves was working in business development for a tech company. She headed to a conference in San Francisco to network and represent her company, just like she had dozens of times before during her three years at the company. But one difference this time? She was carrying a two-week old baby.

“This woman, she saw me,” Reeves said. “I was in line for yet another coffee, because I just wasn’t sleeping much during this season of my life, and she looked at me, and she was like, ‘do you have a baby on you?’”

Reeves said she tilted forward, so the woman could see her sleeping two-week-old.

“She was like, ‘that’s amazing,’” Reeves said. “And I don’t know if it was amazing.”

Reeves said on one hand, she understands the woman’s reaction. Men still dominate the tech industry. But on the other hand, Reeves felt staying at home with her baby would have been better for both of them.

“I think there was a part of me that was so scared that I would not be able to continue my career if I didn’t show up in these key moments,” Reeves said.

Reeves realized that she needed more flexibility, so she asked her company if she could work remotely two days a week.

“Instead, the company countered, and said why don’t you just step back, and you can work three days a week, and you can have three-fifths of your salary, and you can just only work part-time.”

Reeves said that was not an option. So she quit, and started her own marketing and consulting company, Fearless Foundry. Reeves said even though she works long hours, she decides when to work. She also said she’s on track to earn as much as she used to, after five boom and bust years.

But none of this, Reeves said, was a choice she wanted to make.

“I’ve had enough conversations behind closed doors with different women who’ve done the same thing, and a lot of us don’t feel like it was necessarily a choice,” Reeves said. “It was like, we have to do this, because otherwise, we’re going to make sacrifices that we cannot live with.”

Even though entrepreneurship can help women get the pay and flexibility they deserve, it’s not a guarantee.

“My salary is still pretty modest,” said Brandelyn Green, who runs Voice of Hair, a company that makes hair products for women of color.

A couple years after Green launched her first product in 2018, she said the company was pulling in a profit. But Green said she had to spend a lot of that money on new inventory, tools and staff.

Green said she still misses the stability of the regular paycheck she got when she worked in a big company’s marketing department. But running her own business gives her the time she wants to spend with her three kids. And that, she said, is a lot more valuable. 

“I’d rather make slightly less as an entrepreneur, have more flexibility, and be able to be there for my kids, than make 10 times what I make, have no time, [or] the ability to go to their swim practice or soccer games,” Green said.

Green admits that being able to rely on her partner’s health insurance — as did all of the women entrepreneurs in this piece — helped her launch her business. And the balancing act between making enough money and keeping a flexible schedule doesn’t go away even after entrepreneurs start their own businesses.

Sophie Blake opened a store to sell the jewelry she designs in 2016. After her daughter was born in 2019, Blake quickly returned to work.

“I went back from maternity a month later,” Blake said. “That is crazy, if you think about it. You shouldn’t have to do that as a young mom.”

Blake said she had to because she was the business; as the designer, people came to her store to shop with her. But about a year ago, Blake said she decided to close the physical store, and go online only. A big reason? Her family.

“That was 90% of the decision,” Blake said. “I realized that I was missing out on very vital time with my family on weekends because I had to be in the store all the time. And I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to watch my daughter grow up.”

Blake said the decision gave her more flexibility. But it hasn’t given her more pay. Still, Blake said she’s not worried, since the business has been doing really well.

“It was almost empowering to say, ‘You know what? I value time with my child more than making an extra buck here and there’,” Blake said. “When I said that to myself, I was like, ‘Yeah, this feels right, absolutely.'”

And the money, Blake said, will come with time.