3 minute read
Women Who Work it
COLLABORATION
HOW CANNABIS CULTIVATES FEMALES
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BY CHRIS LARKIN
Women occupy 63 percent of executive positions in cannabis testing labs, according to a recent survey conducted by Marijuana[Cannabis] Business Daily, and 36 percent of all executive positions industrywide.
If that second percentage sounds low, consider that of all business execs worldwide, only 15 percent are female.
Internet essayists, who are mostly male, speculate that cannabusiness -- which posted $6.7 billion in North American revenue last year -- is naturally more femalebased because of its birth in the ‘90s as compassionate AIDS medicine. Or that it has to do with the struggle to keep all cannabis plants female and, thus, more productive.
Most women working in cannabusiness disagree.
“I don’t think it’s a question of whether the industry is more receptive or not,” said San Diego cannabis attorney Kimberly Simms. In fact, the very question seems to strike Simms as sexist, since it places women in the position of being judged instead of doing the judging.
“No. Women have been able to rise in these ranks so quickly,” Simms insisted, simply because the industry is so brand new.
“We’re in such a unique time in the history of cannabis,
Kimberely Simms moderating the San Diego chapter meeting of Women Grow.
that there’s so much more opportunity for women to become their own bosses, to become entrepreneurs,” she said.
Simms spoke to CANNA Business Now at the downtown event space 57 Degrees, just before moderating the weekly meeting of the San Diego chapter of Women Grow. The organization, founded in 2014, aims to educate women about the medical benefits of cannabis use and the financial benefits of working in the industry. Simms started its San Diego chapter in 2015 with marketing executive Erin McDonald, who now serves on the advisory board.
“The way women network with each other is different than the way men network with other men and with women,” Simms said. “I just find it’s more collaborative. At other networking events, cannabis or otherwise, it’s more of just a lot of puffery and ‘this is why I’m so great’ instead of ‘this is why I think we can help each other.’”
The meeting of 60 women and a dozen men (who are neither targeted nor turned away) gathered to learn about the weeks’ topic (craft cannabis) then schmooze. They are entrepreneurs, accountants and horticulturists like Allison Justice, one of three expert panelists.
“Traditional agriculture has been run by men,” said Justice, the vice president of cultivation for OutCo, an El Cajon-based medical-marijuana dispensary. Before that, she worked for years in ornamental horticulture.
“But now that it is a new industry and women are just as educated as men and have just as much experience with this new industry,” she said, “both sexes can flood to these opportunities.”
One woman who has is Vanessa Corrales, the founder of B Edibles, a San Diego manufacturer of medical-marijuana cotton candy. Previously, she managed two local coffeehouses.
“The cannabis industry is way more friendly to females,” Corrales said, “absolutely, 100 percent.”
Corrales believes that institutional sexism wasn’t given the chance to take hold in cannabis that it’s had in established other industries.
“It took 10 years of me working crazy amounts of hours -- with a degree -- for me to become a supervisor and then a manager before even be considered for a GM position,” Corrales said. “And I was hitting all my numbers and quotas.
“In cannabis, no one’s going to stop me,” she added. “I don’t have to compete with all these people who have been doing it for 20 years who make up all the rules and hierarchies.” C
