Couple of women create project for entrepreneurship of minorities

The exclusions suffered in the labor market by Nanny Mathias and his wife, Isabelly Rossi, forced the black women couple to bet on entrepreneurship to survive and build a better life. And the understanding of these pains experienced was the starting point for designing a project aimed at strengthening women, black, LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs and people with disabilities, the Hub Diversidade Colorida, which held this Sunday (18) the Diversidade Colorida Fair, in Parque Madureira, in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro. In an interview with Agência Brasil, during LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, the CEO of the Hub, Nanny Mathias, said that the purpose of the fair is to bring together entrepreneurs from these groups to create more connections, enabling partnerships, investments and also more business. “We generate this safe and inclusive space so that people can exhibit their work, their art, their businesses, because they are people who have historically been marginalized and abused by society, who suffer social, educational and professional exclusion”, said Nanny, which counts on the partnership of the woman in carrying out the undertaking. This violence is something that the organizer of the event reports in her trajectory. When enrolling with her wife to finish high school, as the need to work had pushed both of them to drop out of school, she recounts an episode of lesbophobia that exemplifies why there is a need for an education that is safe for minorities. Nanny Mathias and Isabelly Rossi, organizers and creators of the Diversidade Colorida Fair – Photo: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil “When we went back to school a few years ago, my wife and I, on the first day of school, suffered a lesbophobic attack because of our history teacher, who wanted to know who the man in the relationship was. And, not content with us saying that there was no man in the relationship, he insisted and created stories, asked who would pay alimony if we separated, who would stay with the children. He embarrassed us very violently, and when we went to talk to the management, the management simply hid the fact”, he said. The episode, according to Nanny, was before LGBTphobia was criminalized by the Federal Supreme Court. “At the police station, they told us that we could file a complaint if there was a law that protected us, but there wasn’t.” In the job market, she also reports painful experiences, which prevented her from staying in the same job for a long time. “In addition to being a lesbian woman, I am black and a dyke. I have a way of dressing and living that is different. They demand a standard from women, and I arrive breaking that. I worked in a company where people wanted to know who was the my husband, because I didn’t say I was married to a woman. They pressured me so much that I showed them the photo, and they started saying ‘I already knew’. My manager at the time said that my personal life had nothing to do with it and that it had nothing to do with it. prejudice. But the next day, she fired me”. These experiences made the entrepreneur think of the project also as a support network, since the fact that she left to manage her own business did not spare her from new episodes of discrimination. “Violence is daily and in all areas. Today, I suffer from the business world”, she says. “My body represents a lot, I am a woman and I face machismo. I am black and I face racism. I am a lesbian and I face LGBTphobia. I am from axé and I end up suffering religious intolerance”. Colorful Diversity Fair – Photo: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil Among the micro and small entrepreneurs who participated in this Sunday’s fair, there are businesses from different sectors, such as handicrafts, gastronomy and fashion. Participants were also enrolled in an entrepreneurship laboratory, focused on training these people. “These are people who are in entrepreneurship out of necessity in many cases, people who couldn’t study to later undertake and are doing it at the same time. Understanding this need, of so many businesses failing because they don’t know how to manage, we created this laboratory, to create a space for inclusion and training. We have a network of more than 100 entrepreneurs”, said Nanny, who sees the entrepreneurship of these vulnerable groups as a transforming action in the job market. “Unfortunately, the market still has a very large exclusion of black and LGBTQIA+ people, and when you are black and LGBTQIA+, all within the same body, this exclusion is much greater. These people, often within their own businesses, already they take messages about what they live, lived and about the exclusion they suffer. So, like me, they transform their pain into a creative business. This is very interesting”.

Agência Brasil