Grit and grace: US women business owners persevere through COVID

A year after the first COVID-19 lockdowns began in the United States, Al Jazeera asked American women who own small businesses to reflect on the challenges and unexpected silver linings they’ve found.

One year after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and a major threat, triggering the first round of economy-gutting lockdowns, the global economy is still very much in recovery mode — and small business owners have borne the brunt of the downturn. Small- and medium-sized enterprises account for 90 percent of businesses worldwide and 50 percent of global employment. But even before the coronavirus pandemic, many didn’t have the access to capital, credit and technical know-how that their bigger competitors did — especially businesses owned by women and people of colour. After COVID-19 was declared a national emergency in the United States in March 2020, states and cities passed a raft of stay-at-home orders that upended business and life as Americans knew it. While federal government help was promised, it didn’t always reach those who needed it most and often wasn’t enough to offset the financial blow from COVID-19.