Women In The Cannabis Industry

Women have been active in the cannabis industry, cannabis legalization, cannabis testing, and cannabis rights since the earliest days of commercialization, but they have also faced gendered obstacles impeding their growth in an industry worth over 12 million dollars since 2019. "The American cannabis industry accounted for $10 billion of 2018’s lobalfigures, with the average U.S. dispensary pulling in $3 million a year."

Women took the helm in new businesses and markets as recreational cannabis was legalized particularly in four states—Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington—from 2012 to 2014. Female executives and business owners in the budding market contribute to one of the biggest cash crop industries in the US as of 2022. In 2015, one report found that women were 36% of cannabis executives, which was an outstanding figure for a new industry. Four years later, one report indicated that just 17% of executives were women. Although women-owned cannabis businesses were reportedly making about three times as much as male-led businesses, raising capital tended to favor the latter. Gender bias has been a significant factor in policy decisions and organizational success due to anecdotal research showing an increase in women's  influence on the cannabis market.

Consumers of cannabis are increasing in Massachusetts, for instance, yet only 4.7% of cannabis businesses are owned by women in the state of Massachusetts compared to 19.3% of businesses in other industries.

According to some sources, the cannabis industry is a particularly woman-friendly environment and has a higher percentage of women than many other industries for several reasons. Cited reasons include its founding by " liberally minded rebels" less bound by gender conformity; and its being relatively new and "unhampered by established business networks" closed to women, and the lack of glass ceilings in some parts of the industry, especially "support" activities such as finance and investment, marketing, delivery, and agronomy research. Women comprised over 60% of executives in cannabis product testing laboratories in 2015, the highest rate of women executives in the cannabis industry. According to data analysis expert Giadha DeCarcer, "The cannabis industry is so new that there are very few barriers to get in, especially for women ntrepreneurs.

Leadership in product testing and consumer safety

Several women have played pioneering roles in analytical chemistry and microbiology labs focused on cannabis and hemp product testing and consumer safety. Given the fast-pace of the commercial recreational marijuana sector since 2012, testing cannabis crops was not well regulated by any governmental entity.

Rowshan Reordan, a licensed attorney in the state of Oregon since 2006, was among the early innovators in the sector. In 2011, Reordan opened Oregon's Green Leaf Lab LLC, the first accredited, woman-owned, and nearly all-women run cannabis and hemp analytical testing laboratory in the United States. After questioning whether a close friend, who later lost a battle with HIV, had access to clean, tested cannabis, the founder and CEO went on to open a second accredited cannabis and hemp analytical laboratories in California. Green Leaf Lab trademarked their "Cannalysis" process of analytic cannabis testing that employed trained chemists using standardized and peer reviewed analytic testing equipment.

In 2019, Green Leaf Lab filed a complaint ending in a legal battle that became part of a critical issues around the need to protect proprietary