BURLINGTON – It hasn’t taken long for the cannabis industry to fall into the same pattern as the venerable professions of law and finance: Most of the leadership positions are occupied by men.
A study this year from Marijuana Business Daily said more than one-third of the cannabis business executives in the country are women. The number has veered up and down over recent years in the new industry, with a report of 36% in a 2015 Marijuana Business Daily survey, and then a drop to just 17% in 2017. In June, the publication said the number had rebounded to nearly 37%, exceeding the 21% of women holding leadership positions in all business categories in general.
The movement shows progress for women in the new industry, but it also shows that women have a way to go before they’re filling decision-making positions in equal number to their male peers.
“As a woman I am more often than not the minority at the table of a cannabis discussion,” said Laura Subin, a lawyer who works as the director of the Vermont Coalition to Regulate Marijuana. “I’ve been on lots of panels at this point. Women are almost always in the minority in these groups of experts around the cannabis industry.”
In the hopes of encouraging more women to enter the field and expand their reach, Heady Vermont, a Burlington cannabis advocacy and news organization, is holding a Women in Cannabis summit in April in Burlington.
The summit — which is open to people of all gender identities — will include panel discussions, presentations, and workshops on topics like social and environmental responsibility, brand building, raising money, advocacy, banking and legal issues, and leadership.
The keynote speaker is Massachusetts Cannabis Commissioner Shaleen Title.
The cannabis industry has grown enormously over the last several years, with an estimated $14 billion global market in 2018 and expected growth to $24 billion by 2025, according to Grandview, an industry research group. That growth was widely on display last summer in Vermont, where large fields of cannabis plants — almost all of them grown to be processed into CBD — lined many of the state’s rural roads. CBD, or cannabidiol, is a chemical in cannabis that is believed to be effective in treating conditions like anxiety and pain.
After the 2018 Farm Bill lifted federal restrictions on hemp, new growers streamed into Vermont’s market. According to the Vermont Department of Agriculture, 1,142 growers registered with the state to grow hemp — the cannabis plant with very low levels of the psychoactive ingredient THC — last summer on 9,000 acres of land.
After difficulties with wet fields and a lack of buyers, many said they wouldn’t grow again in 2020, or would grow less. Nonetheless, there is still a strong industry of growers and processors in Vermont and nationally. Additionally, it is now legal to grow small amounts of the cannabis plant for its psychoactive compound, THC, and in the coming winter, Vermont lawmakers are expected to take up S.54, a bill that would tax and regulate the sale of cannabis for use as a recreational drug. A regulatory commission that would be created as part of that measure would mandate that the commission give some preference in licensing to businesses owned by minorities and women.
Cannabis industry leaders in Vermont would like to see more women serving as entrepreneurs and decision-makers in the field. The reasons why men are more likely to occupy those positions are complex, said Kathy Blume, communications director for Heady Vermont. One is that cannabis was until recently illegal. In some places, it still is, although with conflicting messages in different states, approval from the Food and Drug Administration, and even municipal regulation, there are many gray areas.
“Frequently, operating in a gray or black market is a young man’s game,” said Blume. “Young guys tend to be the foremost risk-takers in our culture.”
Even where it’s fully legal to grow cannabis, there is still stigma attached to the plant and its products that might also deter women more than men, Heady Vermont CEO Monica Donovan speculated. “There is a little bit of fear around being a parent and using cannabis,” she said. “People have had child protective services called on them for blogging about legal cannabis or using it, even in legal states.”
Subin, too, said that being associated with cannabis is riskier for mothers than for fathers.
“Even though we know cannabis is a far safer choice than alcohol, cannabis users have been stigmatized for a long time as criminals,” said Subin. “There is a dual standard in our society that women, mothers, should be the responsible ones who wouldn’t commit the crime of possessing cannabis or buying cannabis; that that would be more traditionally associated with men.”
Women entrepreneurs in many fields, not just cannabis, are hindered by a lack of access to capital. Blume and Donovan held a gathering in southern Vermont this fall to ask women entrepreneurs what topics they would like to see covered at the summit, and one of the most common requests was for information about access to capital.
“I’m not trying to make overt generalizations here, but I think men tend to fund what is familiar to them,” said Blume. “When you have a male-dominated finance industry, that tends to self-perpetuate.”
It’s well known that capital is a problem for women in many business areas. Female entrepreneurs receive less than 5% of all venture capital funding despite owning 38% of the businesses in the country, said Janice St. Onge, president of the Flexible Capital Fund in Montpelier.
In an essay on the fund’s website, St. Onge said that 90% of venture capital investors are white men. Such investors have a bias toward unfamiliar faces, she said.
“This bias is not always a conscious one, but it is there nonetheless,” she said. “And, it is part of the reason why less than 1% of VC goes to Blacks or Latinos, and less than 5% goes to women.”
Heady Vermont, which is one of several cannabis industry groups in Vermont, has an all-female staff of six. The group this autumn expanded into new 3,000-square-foot headquarters from which it organizes an annual convention and trade show at the Champlain Valley Expo, publishes an information-packed newsletter, and is hiring a lobbyist for the coming legislative session.
Heady’s leaders don’t dwell on the lack of women leaders in cannabis; they’re focused instead on connecting those women so they can get more accomplished together. There will be no vendors present at the summit, said Donovan.
“The focus is on programming, education, networking,” Donovan said. “People from all over the country can bring some of the lessons they have learned in their own states.”
Ideally, new business owners will make connections at the conference that help them get started, said Blume.
“When women gather together, the culture they create is different than when you are in a male-dominated space,” she said. “We are trying to bring a feminist leadership perspective to this event. It becomes a safer space for more open, honest forthright conversation to take place.”
