What You Should Know About Female-Owned Businesses…
It’s well-known that women must deal with a “glass ceiling” in the corporate arena – lower wages and automatic exclusion from the top jobs. Accordingly, many women are taking a different route: they’re coming through the roof and starting their own businesses.
American Express OPEN realized this and recently conducted a study focusing on women-owned businesses. They wanted to see where there has been improvement and where there are still problems. Here’s what they discovered.
There are 8.3 million women-owned businesses in the United States. That’s a 54% growth in the past 15 years. And that growth is good news for all workers out there, no matter their gender. Women-owned businesses employ 7.7 million people, 40% more than the three largest employers (Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and IBM) combined.
Female business owners can also hold their own when it comes to making money and the stats prove it. Women-owned businesses now generate revenues of $1.3 trillion, a 58% increase over the last 15 years. In fact, 2% of women-owned businesses bring in more than $1 million in annual revenue, versus 5% of all firms. Moreover, in 7 out of 13 of the most populous industries, women-owned firms are exceeding overall growth. How’s that for surpassing the glass ceiling?
Of course, there’s still a long way to go and not all the numbers are positive. Women own almost 30% of U.S. businesses, but they attract only 5% of the nation’s equity capital. Even worse, women receive 80% less capital than men in terms of first-year funding. And there’s evidence that a glass ceiling still exists when women-owned businesses start to expand: they experience faltering growth at 5-9 employees or $250,000 in earnings.
So how do we ensure that women-owned businesses will be even more successful in the future? We can start by looking to successful female entrepreneurs for advice. Heather Stouffer of Mom Made Foods points out that “Like my own kids, the company needed constant focus, love and nurturing to become a strong company. My advice to entrepreneurs, similar to motherhood, is to know that it’s OK for your company to make some mistakes. It’s the learning from those mistakes and perseverance that are the keys to building your company into the market leader.”
On Women Power, Ms. Sufen Wang, Wang Solutions
Wang Solutions 