How She Does It
Women's entrepreneurship is the business story of our age...despite what the naysayers, skeptics, curmudgeons and pessimists say.
By Margaret Heffernan

I've been an entrepreneur for twenty years. But even I didn’t know the numbers.

48% of all privately-held U.S. firms are now owned or controlled by women: 10.6 million firms.

These companies are growing at nearly twice the rate of all firms. The number of women’s companies with employees is growing at three times the rate of all firms.

Women-owned businesses are now responsible for more payroll than the Fortune 500 companies combined. Every day in America, 420 new women-owned businesses are formed.

These are phenomenal numbers. They defy logic. The business world isn’t a level playing field and women receive far less, in the way of venture capital, institutional investment and SBA loans, than other businesses. So women aren’t just doing well – their businesses are thriving when the playing field is tilted against them.

Naysayers, skeptics and curmudgeons will try to tell you that this isn’t meaningful. After all, they’ll say, only 4 percent of women-owned businesses have revenues over a million dollars. True – but only 6 percent of all businesses have revenues over a million dollars! 99 percent of America’s businesses are small companies – and they provide more than half our jobs. Small is not trivial.

But, they’ll go on, women’s businesses aren’t really where the action is – they’re floral shops, bed-and-breakfasts, funky boutiques. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The biggest growth sectors for women’s businesses are: wholesale trade, healthcare services, arts, entertainment and recreation, and professional, scientific and technical services. In the economy overall, highest growth isn’t in the tech sector, it’s in the services sector
– right where the women are.

But, the pessimist persists, women aren’t really risk takers. They’re cautious, conservative. This argument collapses in the face of the evidence that women take out more personal debt to fund their businesses. Cautious we may be, but risk-averse we certainly are not.

Defeated by the facts, curmudgeons will point to Martha Stewart with a flourish. There – doesn’t she prove that women just can’t cut it? But hers is one story out of ten million. The trend says so much more than the headline.

That our companies are doing so well says a great deal about female strengths and talents. As long as women continue to slug it out in traditional companies that were built by men, for men, too much of a woman’s energy is spent fi tting in. But once a woman runs her own company, she can work on her own terms. These phenomenal numbers show just how effective women can be. They also demonstrate just how much talent
traditional corporations lose when women give up on them.

But perhaps most importantly of all, these numbers show that businesswomen have arrived as an economic force; there are those who maintain that America’s escape from recession could be attributed entirely to the creation of new businesses by women. What is certain is that when you own, or control, so much of the world’s greatest economy, when you are responsible for so many jobs and, thus, for so many lives, you have become a force to be reckoned with. Don’t let the myopia of conventional business journalism fool you: this is the business story of our age.

I’ve interviewed hundreds of women business owners, across America and the UK and even they, at the cutting edge of a new business order, seem scarcely aware of the tectonic shifts they are causing in the economic landscape. In part, of course, this is because they’re so busy running their companies. But it is also because, as women, we’ve been socialized not to brag. It isn’t ladylike to boast of our accomplishments. And we don’t want to invite hostility by drawing attention to ourselves.

But I think the moment for modesty is long past. One reason these companies are so successful is because they pursue an extremely ambitious definition of success. These entrepreneurs are not successful despite being women — but because they are women. In their own companies, they can lead in their own way, not by imitating men, but by starting with values and driving those values through every process in the business.

These companies make a lot of money. But they make a lot more than money. They make a difference. In the way that they treat employees. In the way that they treat customers. In the products they make and the services they deliver. Owning a company gives a woman a lot of freedom — but also, it seems, a lot of drive. Just imagine that going on in 10.6 million companies a day. If that isn’t something to brag about, I don’t know what is.

As seen in the
Spring 2007 issue of PBWC Connections

more from this issue download the issue

Margaret's 1 Minute
of Wisdom

Women aren’t just
doing well – their
businesses are thriving.

Cautious we may be, but risk-averse we certainly are not.

The moment for modesty is long past.