BOTH/AND: Pride Month with WBEC NY DMV

Living in the “both/and” is a remarkable experience. Not LGBTQ+ or a woman. Not a business owner or an advocate. Not fitting neatly into one box or another, but existing fully in a space where identities converge. For LGBTQ+ women entrepreneurs, that “both/and” is not a complication; it’s a source of perspective, resilience, and creativity that shapes the way they build, lead, and show up in the world. Unfortunately, it is also often a source of invisibility. Systems (social, economic, organizational) tend to be built around single stories. You are a woman, so here is your lane. You are LGBTQ+, so here is yours. But the entrepreneurs who live at the intersection of those identities know that no single lane contains them. They have always had to build something broader.

10% of all women in the United States identify as LGBTQ, and that number climbs dramatically when we look at the next generation of business owners. Among Gen Z adults, that figure rises to 30%. Meanwhile, LGBTQ-owned small businesses are more likely than their non-LGBTQ counterparts to be both owned and operated by women.

LGBTQ women are often asked, implicitly or explicitly, to choose. To lead with one identity or the other. Our organizational infrastructure has, in many ways, reinforced that binary: we have LGBTQ-focused organizations, such as the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), and we have women-focused organizations, like WBEC NY DMV. Both do vital, irreplaceable work, but the woman who sits at the intersection of those identities can find herself navigating two separate worlds.

There’s another layer that’s important to name: LGBTQ+ spaces, so deeply important, are not monolithic, and have not always centered women. Gay men have historically held significant visibility and leadership within LGBTQ business communities, and while that representation is fiercely hard-won and worth celebrating, it can often mean that lesbian, bisexual and queer women find themselves a little to the side of the main conversation once again. The experience of walking into a room of other women, who know what it’s like to be talked over in a meeting, to have their authority questioned, to work twice as hard for half the recognition, is distinct. There is a particular shorthand that exists in these women’s spaces.

That solidarity, the shared fluency in what it means to navigate a male-dominated business world, is a unique experience found in organizations such as ours. For LGBTQ women, WBEC Metro NY and Greater DMV can be the place where, perhaps for the first time, a choice doesn’t need to be made. Both truths can be true: the challenges of being a woman in business, the challenges of being an LGBTQ+ woman in business, and the fullness of who you are beyond that.

This Pride Month, we recognize our LGBTQ+ WBEs. You are a cherished part of our community, an absolute force in the economy, and an essential driver of change. And you deserve spaces that honor every dimension of who you are, not just the parts that fit neatly into a certification category.