Recently, I had the awesome privilege of speaking at two Greater Women Business Council (GWBC) events and moderated the most recent StartupChicks event – both remarkable organizations and wonderful experiences. I have never been involved with “women only” events before (for obvious reasons). While my speeches focused on raising capital and business survival skills, being surrounded by such accomplished women got me thinking in general about the importance of women in entrepreneurship.
There are many statistics regarding women and entrepreneurship. Some studies seem to offer conflicting findings and sources, collection methods, and their significance can always be debated. Given that disclaimer, here are just a few that I find the most compelling:
- 47.7% of all privately held businesses in the United States are owned by women and many experts expect this percentage to increase.
- 50% or more women-owned firms generated $2.46 trillion in sales and employed 19.1 million people nationwide (as of 2004).
- USA Today asked a national sample of men and women if for one year they could take any job they wanted, what would that job be? 47% of the women said they would want to run their own company – compared with 38% of men. (Surprisingly for the men, this was a higher percentage than those who said “professional athlete”).
- Social entrepreneurship is focused on women. Over 90% of the millions of micro-credit borrowers around the world are women.
- Women entrepreneurs are more productive as they generate sales with far fewer median employees than men. For the same level of sales, women-owned firms have almost half of the employees as their male counterparts. Conclusion: women entrepreneurs do more with less. I’m reminded of a quote first presented to me by my wife: Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult – Charlotte Whitton
TechDrawl was founded by a woman. The businesses I started are the result of a woman. While some may not be impressed by the statistics, I don’t think anyone can deny the importance of women in entrepreneurship, whether they are writing the check or influencing the check.
