Female Entrepreneurs and Businesses that are Women Owned

“Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as a survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking. Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading: buying and selling.” – Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop

Below is additional information relating to female entrepreneurs and business owners.

This page accompanies the Female Entrepreneurs section of the chapter, Are You Ready for This? (Yes, You Can Be a Business Owner), in the book, Hire Your Job, Fire Yourself. Here is a link to a web page that provides an overview of that chapter.

Facts about Female Entrepreneurs (as quoted from this section of the book)

• Rolling back the calendar to 1948, only one-third of American women worked outside the home compared to 87% of men. As the decades rolled by, the gap has steadily narrowed as men’s employment rates declined and laboring women increased. Back in August 2014, men had dropped to 70% and women have raised to 57%.
• When it comes to education, women now dominate American college enrollment. For younger workers ages eighteen to thirty-three, women are much more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than men are. They also receive 50% more masters degrees.
• When you put the puzzle pieces together, the growing strength of working women and the glut of highly-educated women, it seems clear that the future growth of entrepreneurship is in the hands of women.
• This has sparked many federal, state, and local programs that target women who are primed to launch their own businesses or to boost their existing businesses into higher growth. Why is the government so interested in the huge potential growth of female-owned businesses? It is a great way to boost our local and regional economies. Their support will help bolster these businesses across the board, especially in areas where there is a significant ownership gap when compared to men. Some of the large-gap fields include information technology, transportation, manufacturing, and construction.
• The chapter has some additonal information.

If you found this web page through means other than the book, you should consider obtaining the book. It has tons more information!

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Additional Resources

Below is a list of resources. If you ever notice that any of these links no longer exist, please contact us and let us know which broken link you found and be sure to mention this web page’s address so we can easily find it. We’d also love to hear from you if you discover some additional information that is not provided below, but should be provided.

• Studies have shown that female potential business owners struggle in two key areas (see below). Both of these situations are fixable and this book can help provide some aspects of the mentoring process and the chapter on Funding Your Business provides excellent worksheets and funding options that many business startups do not realize are available.
  • The first is that they lack mentors and advisers to help guide and motivate them into successful business ownership.
  • The second is that they struggle more than males in obtaining outside funding sources.
• Here’s a link to Content Factory’s 25 Quotes That’ll Inspire Entrepreneurial Women to Kick [Toosh] in Business And In Life
  
• A recent study conducted by the Harvard School of Business found an unfair and significant bias against female entrepreneurs when it came to the art of pitching a concept to a potential investor. Although the results are disappointing, even horrific to think about, they are real nonetheless. After studying multiple pitch competitions and two controlled experiments, researchers found that, “investors prefer entrepreneurial pitches presented by male entrepreneurs compared with pitches presented by female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitch is the same.” They explained, “This effect is moderated by male physical attractiveness: attractive males are particularly persuasive, whereas physical attractiveness does not matter among female entrepreneurs.“ http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/Brooks%20Huang%20Kearney%20Murray_59b551a9-8218-4b84-be15-eaff58009767.pdf
• The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation provided an in-depth document titled, Sources of Economic Hope: Women Entrepreneurship. This document is very interesting and uplifting about the power of women as current and future business owners.
• Advanced Development Concepts, LLC provides a wide range of business coaching, consulting, and mentoring.
• Let us know if you have additional sources that should be included! This page will perpetually be updated.