There is something deeply dishonest about celebrating women in business while participating in the conditions that make it difficult for them to survive.

There is something deeply dishonest about celebrating women in business while participating in the conditions that make it difficult for them to survive.

Today, on Women’s Day, I want to talk about something far less glamorous than empowerment.

Pay your invoices.

Not eventually.Not when your own client pays you.Not after three reminders.Not when your finance department gets around to it.

Pay businesses when you agreed to pay them.

Because a business can be profitable and still die.

That is one of the first brutal lessons of business.

Revenue is not cash.Profit is not liquidity.An invoice is not money in the bank.

A woman can have the skill, the contract, the employees, the strategy and the client list and still lose her business because the money owed to her exists only on a spreadsheet.

South Africa's National Treasury has explicitly recognised that late and non-payment of invoices has "dire consequences" for the private sector, particularly small businesses. Treasury has stated that late payment can force businesses to borrow to remain operational and, in some cases, can contribute to the liquidation of SMMEs. Government institutions are required to pay valid invoices within 30 days, unless another contractual period applies.

This is not an administrative inconvenience.

It is an economic event.

And for women entrepreneurs, particularly Black women, the consequences sit inside a much larger structural problem.

Statistics South Africa's Gender Series shows that in 2024, approximately 76% of female employers and own-account workers operated in the informal sector, compared with around 68% of their male counterparts. Only 21.6% of female-run enterprises were in the formal sector.

Then there is access to capital.

In 2023, only 4.9% of female informal business owners had received formal start-up financing, compared with 12.7% of male informal business owners. Stats SA also found that nearly one in five female business owners lacked formal financial education, despite a significant improvement in women's financial literacy over the period studied.

Read those numbers carefully.

Women are building businesses in an environment where formal capital is already harder to access.

Then we ask them to survive delayed payments.

Then we tell them to be financially literate.

Then we tell them to "manage their cash flow better".

There is a point at which financial literacy becomes a euphemism for "learn how to survive other people's irresponsibility."

Financial literacy matters enormously. Women need to understand cash flow, gross margins, working capital, tax, debt, pricing, credit terms, interest, runway and the difference between turnover and profit.

But financial literacy cannot manufacture cash that a client has withheld.

And business acumen cannot turn a 60-day payment cycle into 30 days.

You cannot optimise your way out of somebody else's failure to pay you.

This matters even more when we consider the intersection of race and gender.

Research on access to finance in South Africa has consistently found that race and gender compound one another, with Black African women historically experiencing some of the lowest levels of access to formal financial services and economic opportunity. Black women have also been identified as the country's largest self-employed segment, yet that entrepreneurial presence has not translated proportionately into financial access.

And the problem has not disappeared.

A 2026 systematic review of research on women entrepreneurs in South Africa continues to identify access to finance as a major constraint on business sustainability. Women often navigate the gap through informal networks, stokvels, microfinance, government programmes and personal resources.

There is funding available.

There are programmes specifically designed for Black women-owned businesses.

But the existence of a funding programme is not the same thing as equal access to capital.

That distinction matters.

Because access means more than a website where an entrepreneur can download an application form.

Access means having the collateral.

Having the credit history.

Having the financial records.

Knowing which fund to approach.

Understanding the terminology.

Having the networks.

Having the time to complete the application.

Having a business model that fits the financier's risk appetite.

And, perhaps most importantly, having enough working capital to survive while waiting for the next cheque.

South Africa has recognised this gap institutionally. Programmes such as the NEF Women Empowerment Fund, SEDFA's women-focused financing and the Isivande Women's Fund exist precisely because ordinary market mechanisms have not produced equal outcomes for women-owned businesses.

So this Women's Day, I want us to expand the definition of what it means to support women in business.

It is not only mentorship.

It is not another panel.

It is not another "women supporting women" Instagram graphic.

It is not telling women to be more resilient.

Sometimes supporting a woman in business is simply:

Pay her.

Pay her on the agreed date.

Pay her the agreed amount.

Do not make her finance your corporation from her small business bank account.

Do not make her borrow money to deliver a service you have already commissioned.

Do not confuse your company's working-capital problem with her entrepreneurial resilience.

Because there is something almost Nietzschean about entrepreneurship:

What does not kill the entrepreneur does not necessarily make her stronger.

Sometimes it simply leaves her poorer.

Sometimes it leaves her indebted.

Sometimes it costs her employees their jobs.

Sometimes it closes the company she spent ten years building.

And sometimes the woman who "failed" was never actually short of ambition.

She was short of cash.

There is a difference.

If we are serious about women's economic empowerment, then we have to stop measuring empowerment only by how many women start businesses.

We must ask:

How many survive?

How many scale?

How many employ other people?

How many access institutional capital?

How many build assets?

How many accumulate wealth?

How many receive payment on time?

Because entrepreneurship without access to capital becomes endurance.

And endurance is not the same thing as economic freedom.

This Women's Day, celebrate the woman who built the business.

But also be the person who makes sure she gets paid.

Her invoice is not a favour.

It is a debt.

Pay it.

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