There are four things I know about my paternal grandmother, Johanna Maragelo Shoke: she was beautiful, a great cook, and she lived under systems that denied her freedom, and only a few photographs remain to tell us who she was.

I have been thinking about her lately, not only as a family member, but as one example of what systemic racism and poverty took from many Black women. Beyond material deprivation, it limited how people were remembered, what they could own, and the futures they were allowed to imagine. My grandmother died without ever voting, owning property, building wealth, or leaving behind assets.

As South Africa marks Women’s Month, her story is a reminder that freedom must also be measured by what women are able to own, build and pass on.

The older I become, the more I understand poverty as more than the absence of money. It is the narrowing of choices. This is why entrepreneurship matters, particularly for women. Ownership changes a woman’s relationship to power: the power to decide, to earn, to employ, to invest, and to pass something on. Yet the money is still not moving to women at the scale required.

According to PitchBook, companies founded solely by women received about 2% of venture capital funding, while the African Development Bank estimates that women-owned and women-led businesses across Africa face a financing gap of about $49 billion. Even when women do reach investors, research first documented in the Harvard Business Review shows that they are often asked risk-focused questions, while men are more often asked about growth. That bias narrows what women are allowed to build before they have even begun.

In South Africa, these barriers are sharpened by history. Apartheid spatial planning pushed many Black women far from economic hubs, while unequal access to land, finance, networks and collateral still shapes who can start and grow a business. The result is not a lack of ambition. It is a system that has made ambition harder to fund.

South Africa has already acknowledged this debt. Former President Thabo Mbeki captured it plainly in his 2003 State of the Nation address when he said no society can claim to be truly free until its women are free from poverty, inequality and unemployment. The National Development Plan 2030 and the Women’s Financial Inclusion Framework also recognise the barriers facing women entrepreneurs. The question now is not whether the problem is understood, but whether recognition will be matched by capital, procurement access and institutions willing to back women in practice.

Closing this investment gap is not only a matter of fairness; it is an economic imperative. The McKinsey Global Institute has estimated that advancing women’s equality could add $12 trillion to global GDP, while the World Bank has linked women’s economic empowerment to higher GDP per capita. UN Women has also cited evidence that women reinvest up to 90% of their income in their families and communities, compared with 30–40% for men. In plain terms, when women earn, own and build businesses, the benefits move into households, schools, communities and local economies.

My grandmother never had the space to ask what she wanted to build; her life was shaped by the more immediate question of how to get through each day. Entrepreneurship offers women a pathway from survival into building, and from managing constraint to exercising choice.

That shift now requires action, not more evidence. One practical example is SheTradesZA, which connects women-owned businesses to markets and value chains. More of this is needed: capital that reaches women, procurement opportunities that are actually accessible, and support systems that allow women entrepreneurs to grow. We already know what the problem is. What is still needed is the will to move money, opportunity and trust into the hands of women who are ready to build.

There are still only three photographs of my grandmother, fragments of a life shaped by limits she did not choose. Women should inherit more than memory. They should inherit businesses, property, wealth, confidence, choices and the freedom to build lives that are fully documented, fully owned and fully their own.

Boitshoko Shoke is the Research and Impact Manager at 22 On Sloane and the GEC+Africa Content Lead