The entrepreneurial capacity of women is crucial for economic growth.
Highlights:
- Women’s entrepreneurship is crucial in promoting economic growth in our country.
- According to Grant Thornton’s Women in Business 2020 report, only 16 percent of women in Mexico hold management and senior positions.
- According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Report 2020/2021, it was revealed that women account for approximately one in three active entrepreneurs in the world.
- Concerning Mexico, we are in 41st place out of 65 in the world ranking of the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs 2021, below countries such as Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Peru.
Creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship are fundamental to health development and essential for current and future medical care. Especially since the pandemic put the spotlight on health. But what about female entrepreneurship in the health sector in Mexico? Women’s entrepreneurship is crucial in promoting economic growth in our country.
“Entrepreneurship has to be easy,” says Dr. María Francisca Vargas, a Mexican entrepreneur, and founder of Galena, Womedic, Connecting docs, Connecting patients, and other initiatives. She is a doctor by profession. Along the way, she has realized that the medical career does not provide adequate tools to understand human beings integrally. Likewise, the academic program of the medical degree“does not teach health professionals to sell their services.” And finally, she has come across a macho culture immersed in a dynamic where it is more difficult for women to be the boss. According to Grant Thornton’s Women in Business 2020 report, only 16 percent of women in Mexico hold management and senior positions.
Entrepreneurship has to be easy.
María Francisca Vargas
“I got very involved in politics and realized that these issues are deeply rooted,” says Dr. Vargas, who has held positions in the Secretariat of Health, among other positions in the public sector. “That was what made me realize the enormous need to build my startups.”
She founded Womedic in 2019, a women’s clinic that provides comprehensive patient-focused consultations. When launching the clinic, Dr. Francisca realized that people generally do not know how to reach what she calls a “superspecialist”: a doctor who meets the patient’s requirements, such as pricing, hospitals, location, and medical specialty, among other factors.
Superspecialist: a doctor who meets the patient’s requirements, such as pricing, hospitals, location, and medical specialty.
María Francisca Vargas
“What I want is for the patient to arrive with their appropriate doctor.” Given this need, she organized a group of doctors on Facebook called Connecting Docs to “refer the patient to their best doctor.” In this group, she presents the cases and obtains options from specialist doctors who later go to Womedic to treat them.
Today, her Connecting Docs venture has evolved. It already has a network of more than five thousand specialists who no longer only care for Womedic patients but also any patient in any health service in Mexico. And that’s how Galena, a “medical broker,” was born, the most recent venture of Dr. Vargas, in which she seeks to connect doctors and patients, in addition to granting the Galena Distinction — with the help of the Better Business Bureau — to clinics and hospitals that meet the ethical, technical, and professional requirements of the evaluation.
According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Report 2020/2021, it was revealed that women account for approximately one in three active entrepreneurs in the world. In the case of the countries of the Latin American and Caribbean region, we can find some of the most vibrant entrepreneurial economies in the world. For example, women in Colombia are twice as likely as men to sell an innovative offer. However, concerning Mexico, we are in 41st place out of 65 in the world ranking of the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs 2021, below countries such as Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Peru.
Although there is a more significant presence of investment funds in Mexico, and the community of entrepreneurs has been growing, a strong culture that encourages entrepreneurship, especially female entrepreneurship, is still needed in the region. In this sense, Dr. Francisca sees a promising future. Now, “being a woman and an entrepreneur is more accepted than before,” she says. She is one of the Mexican entrepreneurs benefiting our community and creating our economic future while opening the doors for future entrepreneurs in the health sector in our country.
