Study: Human Capital and Women’s Business Ownership (SBA Office of Advocacy, 2008, Hackler, Harpel, Mayer, 2008)
Finding: Women are one of the fastest growing segments of the entrepreneurial business sector, having more education, more managerial experience and greater willingness to expand outside of “traditionally female” industries than their wage-earning female counterparts.
Note about The Woman Effect Research Index: This study was performed by researchers not affiliated with InPower Women. Our Research Index includes all relevant research to the subject of women, business and power. We do not influence how the research was conducted or reported by the researchers. In our abstracts, we focus on pulling out the most actionable advice for individual women. To suggest additional research we should index, or discuss our choice of abstract focus, please contact us
InPower Insight: If you’re a woman and thinking of leaving the corporate sector for to own your own business, you’re not alone. Women and entrepreneurship have a lot in common.
Summary:
What patterns do we see among self-employed females, one of the fastest growing entrepreneurial segments?
As women gain more education and encounter more opportunities for advancement, they are also entering the ranks of the self-employed more often.
The study finds that women who are self-employed have more education and earn their degrees much faster than other working females. Self-employed women also hold more executive/managerial positions, and participate in non traditional industries for females. They are also older than wage-earning females, and have more “income diversity”.
Career Coaching Tip: If you’re thinking about going out on your own, don’t feel bound by your experience in the “wage-earning” category. Your female colleagues are using entrepreneurship as the opportunity to expand beyond traditional female employment categories and experiences. Open your mind and your eyes. Other women are doing just that!
FREE PDF Guide to Women in Leadership
Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel in higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
Yesterday morning I had coffee with a fellow mindfulness teacher in the tiny town of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
As we swapped stories about how we were led to this work, she spoke of helping couples who had been through some sort of trauma – an affair, addiction, etc. – but were trying to repair their relationship and hold their families together.
“What did you like most about that?” I asked.
She looked at me and her eyes welled up with emotion.
“So many of my clients deeply regretted the damage they had caused. They would say to me over and over, ‘That’s not who I am.’”
In that moment of genuine sincerity…
… I thought of Paula Deen.
Because in her Today Show mea culpa this week where Deen was asked about making racial slurs in the past, she basically said the same thing.
Over and over.
That’s not who I am.
It’s fascinating how many of us talk such big games about who we are, only to fall short – sometimes when it matters most.
Doesn’t make us bad people.
Doesn’t mean we can’t change.
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be forgiven.
However, it does mean an opportunity for the rest of us to learn from those mistakes.
As I was listening to my friend talk about her clients, I was reminded yet again of how years and years of hard work – with a spouse, with a child, with a colleague, with customers, and, yes, with the Food Network, QVC, and Target – can be gone in a moment.
Which is exactly why you need to own each and every moment you’ve been given.
Because it’s what you do RIGHT NOW that defines who you are.
A few months ago, I was having a heated feminist discussion with a lesbian lawyer who specializes in LGBT legal issues. (As of last week’s Supreme Court decision, her business must be booming! Hooray!) We were both on fire with the issues and loving the debate. The question was whether women are still “oppressed.” As is my wont, I was playing devil’s advocate, which isn’t hard for me considering my belief that women are our own biggest oppressors these days. In my view it’s not really a question of how much women in the U.S. today are held down by the culture as much as how many shackles we are willing to leave on ourselves when the key is lying next to us on the floor. My colleague in dialog was not seeing the issue this way.
Here was the question I asked her that brought her up short: If women of means in a free society – who represent over 50% of the college degrees and entry level workforce – don’t exercise our rights to simply BE equal, what are WE telling the women who don’t have means and who aren’t free? There are millions (billions?) of women in our country and others who face death and worse for even hoping that equality is possible. What hope do they have if we can’t even use the freedom we already have to stop pushing the responsibility off on others and simply BE free?
The conversation shifted after that to the questions that I care about most – the shackles and prisons that live in our hearts and our heads and truly keep us prisoner.
I’m not saying that freeing our minds and hearts from a culture that has made a habit of painting women into a narrow and unhealthy definition of success is easy, or even fully possible for my generation. But I do believe that a modern, professional woman has a better chance at this kind of freedom than any other woman in history.
I don’t know about you, but I am committed to leverage every ounce of freedom our country and culture have given me to free myself. When I’m as free as I can make me, I’ll start complaining about oppression from external sources.
My second son just graduated High School and heads off to VA Tech next Fall. He’s the last one out of the nest and it’s got me thinking about the first half of my parenting life – the half where they are children. I’m grateful for so many things about being a parent, not the least of which is having two fine young men to show for it, but I’m also grateful for what they taught me – about leadership.
I’d like to say that it was my worklife that taught me to be a good parent and working mother. After all, I was working for over a decade before I had kids. But looking back on it, I really wasn’t all that great a manager or leader in my 20’s and early 30’s. Putting “work” before “life” meant I was still trying to figure it all out on the job. I wanted to be a “cool” leader that everyone looked up to, but I failed as often as I succeeded. I felt too competitive with my staff; I overworked myself and resented my staff when they didn’t follow my lead.
Parenting was the force that made me grow up – at work and at home. Here are the two key lessons in leadership I owe to my kids.
Women, despite all of the advances that our society has made, are still forced to grapple with the glass ceiling. While some women have made a name for themselves as directors and board members of major corporations, only 17% of the over 5,000 board seats for S&P 500 companies were filled by women. Europe attempted to solve this problem by adopting legislation with the end goal of having at least 40% of board positions filled by the ‘lesser-represented sex.’ However, I doubt that a similar law would ever fly here in the states. And while it is all too easy to bemoan the patriarchal structure for continuing to keep us of the fairer sex down, I feel as though there is more at play than that. Now, don’t get me wrong — I know that a large part of the reason that women cannot get onto boards is simply because many corporations are still considered boys clubs. A report released in 2012 by Ernst & Young backs up that assertion, as the largest increase in gender diversity has been on boards that were diverse already, and change amongst corporate America’s largest boards has been sluggish.
But compare those facts to the state of entrepreneurship amongst women. Women primarily found small businesses, and have done quite well as entrepreneurs. American City Business Journals discovered that women own nearly half of all companies with less than four employees. In addition to this, the Guardian Life Small Business Institute predicted that, by 2018, more than half of all small businesses founded would be founded by women.
Mom and pop shops have become more mom than pop, and while women are not making the same strides in the boardroom, this development is extremely interesting. It is dangerous to rely on personal anecdotes to back up any assertion, but when I graduated from Pepperdine, I was offered a position on a few boards. While these were not multi-billion dollar multinational corporations, they were making money and growing, so inviting someone fresh out of business school was a bit of a gamble.
After talking about it with my husband and figuring out what I wanted to do in terms of a family, I denied the offer and instead chose to follow a different path. A path that eventually led me to MyCorporation, a company I bought and became CEO of. And I chose that path because I wanted to be able to spend time with my sons and my family. While a career was important, my family was my life, and I wanted a position where I can spend time with them without sacrificing my standing in the eyes of my employer.
Board positions require an immense amount of dedication, more dedication than I was willing to give. They also typically require that you work within a strict set of standards. Not every woman wants a family, but I did, so I couldn’t spend that much time in a boardroom. I like being able to be the mom who helps out in her son’s classroom, and had I not bought MyCorp that would have been impossible to do. So maybe there is a reason beyond patriarchal constraint to explain why women are not more represented on boards – though, admittedly, sexism is still a serious problem in corporate America.
In fact, that could very well be another reason why women are avoiding traditional business models. They are flawed, static, and often inflexible. Instead of having to deal with a room full of people that are put off every time you voice your opinion, or face being stuck in a rut because no one wants to risk changing anything, many women are simply forgoing the traditional corporate ascent and striking out on their own.
Of course, those of us who have found success in business have a duty to mentor the generations of women still trying to figure out what they are going to do when they leave business school. Women who have made a board position work should share how they did it, and what to expect, and those of us who run our own businesses need to do likewise. Hopefully, as time goes on and more women make it in business, corporate culture will change and the barriers to entry that currently block many women from joining corporate boards will be knocked down.
We do not live in a world without gender – gender still defines how we view others, and ourselves, and often determines what expectations are placed on us. But there is something inspiring about the fact that, despite gender assumptions, many, many, many women are proving their mettle by striking out on their own and founding their own businesses. Not everyone will be an immediate success, but the fact that Main Street USA is becoming a bit more female is heartening.
Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation.com. MyCorporation is a leader in online legal filing services for entrepreneurs and businesses, providing start-up bundles that include corporation and LLC formation, registered agent, DBA, and trademark & copyright filing services. MyCorporation does all the work, making the business formation and maintenance quick and painless, so business owners can focus on what they do best. Follow her on Google+ and on Twitter @deborahsweeney and @mycorporation.
FREE PDF Guide to Women in Leadership
Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel in higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
The number of female entrepreneurs is on the rise and (thanks in part to Lean In) so is their optimism about growth opportunities for their business. Where are the best cities in America for female small business owners to thrive, and what are the best ways to get to the top? Check out the graphic below to learn more.
Being an entrepreneur is all about empowering yourself to create a business that’s right for you. It’s about facing up and rising to different challenges, overcoming the day-to-day demands, learning and planning for the future.
In a new campaign e-commerce specialists Alibaba are celebrating female entrepreneurs. They want to encourage women to realize their vision and head down the path of creating a thriving and successful business.
Starting your own company can be a daunting prospect, but listening to the stories of some of Alibaba’s successful customers can help show you how achievable it is. These stories show how, by overcoming the various challenges and with dedication, hard work, belief and ambition, you can reach your goals and realize any dream you want.
Meet Chelsea Abingdon Welch
Chelsea Abingdon Welch makes luxury designer watches for adventurous, high-flying women. At the age of just 19 she went about setting up her own business, challenging stereotypes to create a range of high quality aviation watches. She also runs a group that supports and celebrates female stunt pilots.
After initially learning to fly she noticed how all the guy pilots had amazing watches, which had all kinds of different functionalities. But she also noticed they only made them for men, so what did she do? She went out and produced a range for women, proving that there’s no point waiting for somebody else to do it when you can do it yourself.
Meet Kate Castle
Kate Castle’s story shows how you can create a business from the simplest idea and you don’t need a huge infrastructure to make it work. Being a mother of two children she noticed how, when out camping, going to the toilet in the middle of the night could be a problem. So she created Boginabag, a portable, lightweight toilet to meet these needs.
Even though she had no previous experience in how to turn something from an idea into a product, she got a product sketched out and then used Alibaba to find manufacturers and make her dream a reality. Now her business is growing into an international company — her story shows its possible to achieve whatever you set your mind to. She’s even inspired her kids to want to set up their own businesses too.
Meet Li Su Ling
Li Su Ling runs a successful clothing company that she started back in 2003. With the simple goal of wanting to produce quality outdoor clothing she’s seen her business grow and grow. She puts her success down to hard work, striving for excellence and maintaining high production values so that her team have respect for the product and take pride in the work they do.
With this solid relationship with her employees, it ensures customer satisfaction, as they know they can trust the product and the people behind it. Li Su Ling’s story teaches us a valuable lesson about creating the right work environment to encourage the best from those around you.
Find out more and submit your own story
Alibaba wants to hear your inspirational stories too. If you’re a female entrepreneur they want you to submit your story and you could be in with the chance to win a mentorship from one of five successful businesswomen.
It’s a unique opportunity to learn from experienced entrepreneurs who have turned their ideas into business acumen. You’ll learn from some of the best so you can expand your business and make it even greater, achieving more than you thought possible.
InPower Women accepted this post from a sponsor because we love the stories of these women and how they have built their businesses based on true faith in themselves. Do you have a post you’d like to sponsor on InPower Women? Contact us.
If you write a leadership blog you know the challenge of dredging the stock photo sites for perfectly politically correct photos of happy business women and men sporting every hue of skin color from creamy white to chocolate brown. If you actually run a business, you know the photo-dredgers have it easy when it comes to filling the executive suite with such variety. Building a diverse workforce isn’t so hard given the growing numbers of minorities in the U.S. population, but grooming them into leadership is another matter entirely.
We’ve all been there. Having a great day. Checking things off the to do list.
Then boom! You hit a wall worse than a marathoner bonking at mile 20.
You want to crawl under the desk. It takes an hour to get back to the same level of productivity. That’s an hour you’ve either lost or you have to tack to the end of your day. Most people do the latter, whether it’s staying late or working from home at night.
This is just one example of how we survive at work instead of excel. Unfortunately, just surviving seems widespread since some 74 percent of people wouldn’t mind a new job according to Forbes.
So how do you excel at work?
Most of us think we have to go the extra mile. Work harder. Take more on.
Wrong.
The real secret to excelling at work is learning to better fuel your body and soul. In this case, we’re talking about learning how to thrive. This article contains three easy steps for excelling and thriving at work.
Feed Your Brain
With the decrease in manufacturing jobs, we have become an intellectual economy. Whether services or products, most employees are hired for their brain not their brawn. Even retail, customer care and sales people must use their brains if they want to excel, thrive and earn bigger commissions.
Most people, however, are feeding their brains on survival mode. A 2004 study showed that ¾ of all restaurant meals were from fast food. Despite the success of the Food Network and cooking shows, we are eating most meals from the Standard American Diet playbook – sodas, energy drinks, sugar, fried foods, and refined and processed foods. The truth is, we can do all the Sudoku we want to improve our brain function, but it’s of little benefit if we aren’t providing our brain the nutrients it needs to create more neurons for better thinking.
To excel, you must start eating brain foods. Specifically eat a diet rich in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats like nuts, avocados, cold-water fish, deep green vegetables like spinach and kale and pumpkins seeds. Antioxidants are another great brain food and can be found in berries, high quality chocolate and cruciferous vegetables.
Excel Tip: For managers looking to get more brain power out of their employees, work with your facilities and human resources managers to ditch the soda and snacks machines and stock the kitchen with brain healthy foods. Some examples are: walnuts, pumpkin seeds, fruit especially berries, fruit smoothies, guacamole, snack bars with nuts, dates and flaxseeds.
Sleep Is Not For Sissies
At a National Association of Women Business Owner panel I attended several months ago, I listened in horror as each CEO of a multi-million dollar company was proudly sharing how she was sleep deprived. They wore their sleep deprivation like a badge of honor.
Sadly, these successful women were teaching that to create a growing, thriving business you must give up sleep. But sleep deprivation puts us in survival mode once we get to work, where we are constantly seeking out sugar and caffeine to make it through the day.
I asked myself, what if they hadn’t given up on sleep? What if they had drawn a line and insisted on eight hours sleep? Might their company be even more successful?
The research certainly supports that notion. We see the amount of sleep college students get affecting grades by as much as a whole letter grade for each hour of additional sleep.
The April edition of the Harvard Business Review reported on a study at Singapore Management University about sleep deprivation and productivity. The study showed that for every hour of sleep that was interrupted, the participants spent 20% more time “cyberloafing” (i.e., personal email and checking social networking sites instead of working. Not exactly excelling.
Excel Tip: Make 8-hours sleep a daily non-negotiable. If you think that will be the kiss of death at work (like I did), take this data to your boss and suggest changing your work hours, or working from home so you can skip your commute.
Practice Giving
A giving work place culture translates into a high energy, thriving work culture. Specifically, giving yields higher-profitability, productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction, according to research by Nathan Podsakoff of the University of Arizona. Giving also translates to lower costs and turnover rates.
As an employee looking to excel, giving can be your secret weapon.
When you are in survival mode, you feel pressed for time, huddled at your computer, typing away, just trying to get it all done, not making waves and hoping the next round of budget cuts doesn’t land you in the unemployment line. Giving is not something you’re thinking of when you’re just surviving.
Giving makes us feels good and that is the key to excelling at work or any endeavor. Giving also releases endorphins that make us happy. I suspect this happiness leads to more creativity and engagement and thus the business results found by Podsakoff.
Excel Tip: A couple of times a day, get up and visit a co-worker for a few minutes. Find out what they are working on and how you might be able to help. Even if you can only offer them a different perspective on the problem they are working on you will have served, you increase your value to the company and you feel good.
Sometimes it’s the small changes we make in our behavior that have the most profound results. Excelling at work doesn’t have to be complicated. Sure continual learning and skills acquisition is important, but these simple steps can yield big results.
Being a female entrepreneur has its upsides, but also its disadvantages. Like having to find an answer to the question I – contrary to my male colleagues ? – get asked a lot. “As a mother of three children, how do you balance your work and your private life?”
This time the question came after I finished giving a guest lecture. I shared my advice on how to be an entrepreneur. I talked about how to learn from failure, how to engage employees, … Afterwards there was time for some questions and answers. In most cases, my lectures are very interactive, so there are always lots of questions. Some of them I love very much. Like: “How did you manage two companies at the same time?” “Didn’t you prefer to manage the new one more than the other?” I like these questions, because these are things I really struggled with and I learned a lot from that.
And then in came the question that everyone wants to ask, but almost no one dares. Maybe because they are afraid it could appear sexist, maybe because they are afraid that asking the question could imply they lack motivation themselves. But this one person stood up and asked: “How do you deal with your work-life balance, while having three children?”
To be honest, I have no idea.
I don’t need a balance; I’m not looking for a way to balance my private life with my professional life. I’m just trying to have a great life. Ever since I started my first company in 2003, my professional life has been taking up a lot of my time. There have been successes, failures, crises, expansions, new developments and the challenges of day-to-day management. Sometimes a crisis forced me to skip a family vacation. Often I came home too late from work to tuck my children in.
Does that mean my children are neglected? Of course not! At some point in our life my husband and I had the feeling we weren’t around enough for our children and we had to make a choice. And we did: we decided I would expand my business, while my husband became a stay-at-home dad helping me as well, but mainly during school hours. We are certain our children receive all the time, attention, and care they need, while they also get to see the world, both literally and through stories about economy, failure, struggle, profit, VAT.
My husband and I make a great team. We found a way to live the life we love, without feeling guilty. So the answer is: I never have to think about a balance. I work with the people I like, I live with the people I love and I love the job I do.
