Women In Business: Paving Entrepreneurial Paths

A unique and growing population of workers, business owners, and community leaders is rising from the catharsis of COVID-19 and its consequent upheavals. They’re reinventing old strategies to accomplish new goals, using innovative and improved methods to reduce waste and enhance value. As additional members join and widen this circle, its influence on neighborhoods, cities, and states will grow even more substantial, triggering changes in how society works and thrives. The really cool point about the people in this crowd? They’re all women.

Crisis Drives Change

The COVID-19 pandemic may prove to be a pivot point for working women. The health crisis forced millions of them out of their jobs while also adding additional demands on those whose work continued on. In many sector economies, where most of the low-paying jobs are typically held by females (caregiving, healthcare, and hospitality, as examples), women suffered significant losses. As hotels, schools, and childcare centers closed, more women than men were suddenly out of work, while at home, women were disproportionately more likely to pick up the added burden of caring for kids and family even while they remained fully employed. By February 2021, just nine months after the pandemic declaration, the number of women in the labor force was as low as it had been in 1988; an entire generation of growth gains had disappeared.

Since then, however, women have stepped up more often and in more significant ways than men, frequently seeking not just ‘work’ but also ‘career.’

• As they re-entered the job market, many were more vocal about higher pay and better working conditions, compelling employers to not just promise more but also provide more.
• They’ve also expanded their opportunity to attain more flexibility in their occupations. The emergence of remote work facilitates more options for and avenues to success at both work and in the home.

Consequently, as of mid-2023, 77.6% of women aged 25-54 years were actively engaged in the workforce, up from 77% in February 2020. Women now make up a full half of the labor force, and have become a force in that environment in and of themselves.

Change Drives Progress

In many cases in America and around the world, the newly envisioned future for the woman worker includes owning a business, not just working at one. The number of female entrepreneurs is rising:

• Women in countries with traditionally low incomes have a higher rate of entrepreneurial pursuits, according to data from the World Economic Forum (WEF). In those regions, more than one in four females (28.2%) espouses being an entrepreneur, while only 11% of women in higher-income countries indicated their drive to be their own boss.
• Younger women are also stepping outside the ‘find-a-job’ mentality. In the United States, people (men and women) between 18 and 34 years old are almost twice as likely to start their own company (27.5%) as those in the 35-64 age range (14.5%).
• Women owners are also more likely to go ‘solo’ in that role, starting and then keeping their small business small. Between 50 and 55% of all global woman-owned companies have five employees or fewer.

Women now represent a quarter of high-growth entrepreneurs around the world. In America, 42% of all companies are woman-owned, and those organizations employ over nine million workers and generate over $1.9 trillion in annual revenues. As a population, women business owners are striding into the future armed with better information, a more receptive environment, and a confidence borne of experience and necessity. They’re still facing barriers, however.

Progress Pursues Goals

The two most glaring obstacles that women face – as entrepreneurs or simply employees seeking to advance – are:

1. The rules, mores, and regulations in place that reduce their visibility and restrict their access to needed resources, and
2. The lack of access to capital financing.

Social and Corporate Customs Impeding Women’s Progress:

• Despite their significant presence in most occupations, many female voices are still unheard by their male business counterparts. In many sectors, their observations and competency are still overlooked or disregarded even when they’re pointing out unexpected market opportunities.
• Males also don’t engage as often with women entrepreneurs as they do with male-owned companies. Gender-based networks, both business-wise and socially, often leave women on the wrong side of a closed door.
• Women are still burdened by an unbalanced demand for child- and caregiving activities. During the pandemic, when children were home instead of at school, less than half (42%) of the female lawyer+mother respondents to a National Woman’s Law Center survey could maintain their workload while working from home, compared to 58% of men+dads. That disparity was more pronounced for parents of children under five years: 28% to 54%.
• Also, because they still perform the majority of unpaid jobs (child care, parental care, housekeeping, etc.), women are too often unable to earn more money outside those roles through part-time work or because they miss opportunities to advance.

Lack of Access to Financing

Women continue to:

• be paid less than men for doing the same work;
• perform much, if not most, of the unpaid labor in the community, from caring for family members to doing all the cleaning, cooking, and managing of domestic activities and
• advance more slowly than men up corporate ranks. From 1991 to 2019, the percentage of women in upper management roles grew by only ~8%, from ~32% in 1991 to 39.4% in 2019.

Their reduced financial position also limits women’s capacity to gain the funding they need to launch, build, and grow their enterprises. Research by the WEF reveals that only ~5% of the $344 billion in venture capital (VC) invested in startups in 2023 went to woman-owned companies, a rise of only ~2.5% since 2008. That gap in financial support between male- and female-owned businesses accounts for a loss of as much as $1.7 trillion annually, simply because women business owners don’t have the resources they need to accomplish all the promise their enterprise offers.

Despite the lack of financial backing, women in business continue to add resources, capital, and innovation to the post-COVID economy. As that trend continues, their influence and impact on society can’t help but improve their status as equal and valuable economic partners to their community.