We’ve heard a lot of positive news lately about the rise of women – in the workforce, in corporate leadership, and in business ownership:
The recent Shriver Report, entitled “A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” marks the soon-to-occur occasion of women comprising half of the workforce in the United States,
The Center for Women’s Business Research states that a more complete accounting of the economic contribution of women-owned firms should go well beyond their revenues, and estimates that it could be as much as $3 trillion if the purchases of the firms, their employees and their suppliers are included, and
Most recently, the January 2nd issue of The Economist proudly displayed Rosie the Riveter on the cover, drawing attention to an article, headlined “Female power,” which boldly states that “the economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years.”
Progress has not been uniform, however, as the article correctly states. Developed economies have advanced farther than emerging economies, and – while there is more economic opportunity for women as workers, managers and owners – public policies, programmatic support and cultural views still present barriers to gender equality.
The fact that there is still a rather divided picture and point of view of the economic status of women need go no further than the article on the facing page of The Economist’s cover story. There, in stark contrast to the largely positive tone of “Female power” is the curmudgeonly Schumpeter column, entitled “Womenomics,” which blasts women business owners who want to lead their firms in a more interactive, idealistic, and nurturing manner as misguided. Schumpeter opines that “women would be well advised to ignore the siren voices of feminism,” concluding that “it would be a grave mistake to abandon old-fashioned meritocracy just at the time when it is turning to women’s advantage.”
Well, Womenable would say that if we all behaved ourselves, acted more lady-like and awaited the meritocracy to reward us for our good behavior, we’d be waiting a darn long time. The Schumpeter column admits this, saying that at the current rate of progress it would take 60 years for women to gain equal representation on the boards of the FTSE 100. Similarly, just 15% of board seats on Fortune 500 companies are held by women, and just 13.5% of executive officer positions in these companies are occupied by women. These shares have not risen significantly in recent years, leading Catalyst’s President and CEO Ilene Lang to state, ” The time is up for ‘give it time.’”
We agree. Why should women continue to wait for our turn – or, for that matter, lead and manage our businesses the way it has always been done? While Womenable fully subscribes to the slogan “We Can Do It!” we don’t feel that we’re quite at “We Did It!” yet. And, as to waiting for the meritocracy to reward us for our good behavior, we’d reply with another aphorism: “well-behaved women rarely make history.”
The article in the UK’s Sunday Times on 3 January began in a promising manner, referring to recent reports that 2010 will usher in the decade of the woman entrepreneur:
“‘A tenfold increase in the number of female CEOs in FTSE 100 companies!’, ‘Double the number of female MPs!’, ‘100% growth in women-owned start-ups!’ — these predictions come from the trendspotter Jeremy Baker, of ECSP Europe Business School.”
But the article’s headline? “Meet the lipstick entrepreneurs” – ugh! And where is the article placed? In the paper’s “Life & Style” section – double ugh!!
OK, so maybe this cheeky headline is just a nod to the title of a recent report from The Future Laboratory sponsored by Avon Products, but Womenable prefers the sentiments and styling of this shout out to the UK’s women business owners, which we likewise came across on the same date:
While Womenable frequently admires the UK’s cheeky monikers, such as “mind the gap,” we know that words matter. This recent headline – and the placement of the article in the Style section rather than in Business – speak volumes about why, despite policy efforts, women’s entrepreneurship in the UK still lags that in the US and in many other developed economies. C’mon Sunday Times, treat women business owners as the economic engine that they are, and don’t belittle the message of the article by slapping on a demeaning headline and placing it in the Style section. That’s so last century.
To close out the year, the Womenabler Blog would like to offer up what we see as the most interesting and relevant activities that have taken place in the field of women’s enterprise development. So here – in no particular order – are what we see as the ten most noteworthy trends and events of the year:
The feminization of US entrepreneurship policy? With a new administration and a new Congress in 2010, for the first time ever, four of the five key political figures in small business in the United States are women: SBA Administrator Karen Mills, Senate Small Business Committee Chair and Ranking Member Mary Landrieu and Olympia Snowe, and House Small Business Committee Chair Nydia Velazquez. Might that be one reason why, for the first time in years, there’s been an increase in the budgets for the Women’s Business Center program and the National Women’s Business Council?
The “male” recession. It’s been referred to as a “man-cession,” mostly because of the disproportionate impact it has had on manufacturing and other male-dominated sectors. (One could also say it was caused in large measure by testosterone-fueled behavior in the financial sector.) It remains to be seen, though, whether the recovery will lead to a return to “business as usual,” or if some female common sense will start to be taken more seriously. Right now, it doesn’t look good for the latter scenario.
The growing case for investing in women’s economic empowerment internationally: We’re seeing more and more evidence coming to light showing a broader impact from and greater return on investment in women’s enterprise development compared to gender-blind program support. Right now, the focus is on developing economies and micro-enterprise. Up-market ROI seems more elusive to capture.
Glossy recognition for advances women have made in the workplace in developed economies: The Shriver Report, “A Woman’s Nation” made a big splash this year by bringing some attention to the progress that women have made in the workforce in the US, largely in spite of lagging public policy. Ernst & Young has also published two glossy reports on women as “groundbreakers” and on the need for more women to “scale up” in business. While all are welcome additions to the knowledge base, women’s entrepreneurship is largely missing from these discussions.
Organizational implosions: Two organizations that have helped to make great strides for women-owned businesses, the Center for Women’s Business Research in the US and Prowess in the UK, each imploded this year – with their founding directors (of 20 and 10 years, respectively) both leaving somewhat less than voluntarily. Here’s hoping that these two valuable womenabling organizations will emerge stronger from their current states of limbo.
Skål to women in Scandinavia: Yet again, when the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report and the UN’s Gender Empowerment Measure and Human Development Index were published, Nordic countries came out on top, showing women in the region to be closer to men than in any other part of the world in terms of health, education, labor participation and political empowerment. Still, entrepreneurship rates for women lag behind those of men there and elsewhere around the globe, according to the annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports.
A growing focus on people over profits: We’ve noticed more talk of social enterprise this year – businesses that exist to reach goals that go beyond the financial. Some of the sources of that increased attention may be coming from: the Ashoka Fellows program, now in its 28th year; the Skoll Foundation and its World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship; and a new “Social Enterprise Mark” for products and services offered by social enterprises in the UK. May it continue to spread in the new year.
One size does not fit all: 2009 saw the launch of new or expanded women’s business centers in Egypt, Pakistan, and Peru – and a promising effort in the UK to set standards for the essential elements of women-friendly and female-focused business support services (see wbcinternational.org). All efforts recognize that one size does indeed not fit all in terms of supporting enterprise development.
Most noteworthy non-event: In this, the 10th year of the annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor series of reports on entrepreneurial activity, where was the annual report on women’s enterprise? Missing in action! Let’s hope that 2010 will see the resumption of this important analytical effort.
It’s another headline that seems a little bit too good to be true (hearkening back to the October announcement from the National Women’s Business Council and the Center for Women’s Business Research that women-owned firms “create or maintain” fully 23 million jobs, more than three times the number published by the US Census Bureau) – that, by the year 2018, women-owned firms will account for half of all new small business jobs and one-third of all new jobs in the US.
Guardian’s Small Business Research Institute made this announcement in a news release just the other day, saying that these projections are based on a “rigorous analysis of converging factors.” The release goes on to say that these firms will transform the workplace due to women business owners being less hierarchical and more customer-focused.
While Womenable agrees with their findings that many women are launching their enterprises in part to thumb their noses at the corporate rat-race, and that women are more likely to seek fulfillment from enterprise creation which goes beyond making a buck (see our commentary in our most recent e-newsletter), we have our doubts that such a sea-change in the business environment will happen in less than a decade. We would, of course, love to be proven wrong!
Given the overall political situation in the United Kingdom, it may come as no surprise that women’s enterprise issues are in transition as well. But even though, as the saying goes, there’s nothing as constant as change, two recent “swan song” events there are noteworthy and warrant some observations.
First, the three-year lifespan of the UK’s Women’s Enterprise Task Force came to an end late last month – with a final event on Women’s Enterprise Day on 18 November, the issuance of a final report and recommendations to the government and other stakeholders, and the publication of an official government response. While we at Womenable have heard many comments from womenablers in the UK that the performance of the task force has been – to put it kindly – underwhelming, we’d like to offer up this thought: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. In the case of the National Women’s Business Council in the US, after which the WETF in the UK was patterned, it took until 1993, four years after it was first established, for the organization to be restructured into its current form. Prior to that time, like the WETF, there was a strange brew of public and private sector members, and the Council was chaired by whomever was the Administer of the US Small Business Administration. Now, the NWBC governance rules call for a woman business owner chair, and the 14 members are either individual women business owners (8) or representatives of women’s business organizations (6) – a much more impactful structure. We’d advise the same for the UK.
Secondly, a two-year project – the Women’s Enterprise Centre of Expertise – has also come to an end. Housed within Advantage West Midlands, a regional economic development agency, WECOE was founded to take a hard look at business support within the region with an eye to gathering and sharing good practices, conducting research to assess needs and impact, and provide fact-based guidance for all of the stakeholders in the region – and beyond – that wish to increase the effectiveness of their support for women’s enterprise development. It, too, had an “end of remit” gathering, at which several interesting pieces of research were discussed. (Visit the link above to access links to all of them.)
At the event, Womenable was asked to provide observations on trends in women’s enterprise in general, and offer suggestions for the way forward – not only for women’s enterprise development in the West Midlands, but the UK, the US and elsewhere. If you are bored and can tolerate the low-quality audio, here is a link to a SlideShare presentation of the remarks, which is 14:12 in length:
In summary, it takes a long-term vision and strategy to make change happen: gathering evidence is like making bricks – necessary but not sufficient for building a sustainable, weather-proof structure of support. It takes much longer than two years to start seeing results.
Secondly, efforts must be inclusive and mindful of the diverse needs and unique styles of learning and leadership among women; one size definitely does not fit all.
And, finally, my wish for the new year: that we all – we enablers of women’s enterprise – start doing a much better job, not only of communication and cooperation, but of but true and deep collaboration amongst ourselves; for we are the ones that need to concentrate our passion and purpose to effect a faster rate of change. I, for one, am growing tired of small steps and incremental change. It’s time for a women’s enterprise revolution. Anyone care to join me?
Back in February of this year, the management consultancy Ernst & Young published a well-designed report, “Groundbreakers,” that synthesized and summarized the growing body of evidence that investing in the empowerment and inclusion of women can reap economic rewards. Focusing largely on women in corporate settings, the report made the point that diversity is “an equation for success” and pointed out the need to get beyond token inclusion to the adoption of diversity as a central tenet of leadership development and team-building.
In their latest report in what they are now calling their “Groundbreakers” series, Ernst & Young turns their attention to women’s entrepreneurship. “Scaling up: Why women-owned businesses can recharge the global economy” gathers up many sources familiar to we womenablers and again compiles an easy-on-the-eyes summary of key points, such as:
legal and cultural barriers currently set many women business owners on a lower growth trajectory,
access to markets, networks and capital are all challenges, and
education and business support often does not get women past the ABC’s of starting a business and on a path to thinking bigger.
What does the report suggest in the way of possible solutions to these challenges? More mentoring and roles models, programs to expand professional networks for women, and nurturing high-potential women business owners with coaching and other forms of personalized support – such as those offered by the ATHENA PowerLink mentoring program, Count Me In’s Make Mine a Million $ Business initiative, Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women initiative and Ernst & Young’s own “Winning Women” program launched last year.
The report ends with this call to arms:
“As it is used in sociology, the term ‘tipping point’ — popularized
by author Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book of that name —
describes the transformation that results when a movement
for change reaches the point where it becomes an inexorable
force. Gladwell calls it ‘the moment of critical mass, the threshold,
the boiling point.’ Women are at the threshold. As we emerge
from a historic economic downturn, a vital push is needed
to make women’s enterprises an unstoppable force for
positive transformation.”
Early next month (10 December to be exact), marks the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations, which states in part that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
Would that it were so. I think we can all agree that this declaration is an aspirational one, not yet reflective of reality. While we’ve seen some significant fundamental progress in terms of life expectancy and living standards around the world, how equal in dignity are we when:
nearly 1 billion people worldwide live on less than $1 USD per day,
around that same number do not have ready access to clean water,
2.5 billion do not have access to basic sanitary facilities, and
an estimated 100 million women and girls are deemed “missing” from the world’s population because of unequal access to medicine, nutrition and birth selection.
In fact, a recent report published last year at a meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva found that even those nations that have ratified the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) still practice statutory gender discrimination – meaning that women are still treated unequally under the law even after declarations of equality. “There is clear evidence that even those States whose constitutions guarantee equality before the law … have laws that discriminate against women,” says Dr. Fareda Banda, author of the study.
Maybe because we can’t seem to do it ourselves – or are in need of a little positive reinforcement – there are some efforts underway to nudge us all along in the dignity department. I read with interest that just last week a woman from the UK, a former nun and one of the winners of last year’s TED Prize, launched a Charter for Compassion:
I also recently read a commentary article in Ode magazine by Charles Best, founder of donorschoose.org, entitled, “The Goodness of Crowds,” making the point that hundreds or thousands of small actions can make a big difference. That’s certainly true – and Womenable lives by the credo to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”(Margaret Mead) – but sometimes we could all use a little push in the right direction.
So, while declarations of dignity such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, CEDAW, and the Charter for Compassion are not destiny, I’d say that some positive reinforcement of The Golden Rule is certainly called for in this day and age.
Two new reports from august organizations – the World Bank and the Ashoka Foundation – draw needed attention to a challenge that many, if not most of us, in the developed world take for granted: the availability of electricity, water and basic sanitation. These studies also help make an important point: that taking care of these basic services can “fuel” entrepreneurial development. In the developing world much human time and energy is spent seeking out fresh water and dealing with the vagaries of intermittent power, time that could otherwise be used to go to school or to start and grow a business.
The World Bank study -“Getting Electricity” – published by the Doing Business team, takes a look at the linkages between getting power and growing businesses. Not surprisingly, there is a correlation, although is is not purely a function of level of economic development but also of the connection costs and the number of steps it takes a business to get wired into a power grid. Further, the study reports that businesses in low income countries suffer an average of 18 power outages per month, compared to 8 per month in lower middle income countries and 3 in upper middle income countries.
The Ashoka Foundation effort focuses at the “bottom of the pyramid” – at the 16 billion people around the world that have no electricity. Their research effort, undertaken in partnership with Hystra and three French energy companies (GDF Suez, Schneider Electric and Total), investigates efforts to bring more power to the people. These efforts are found to cluster in four categories: grid connections, power devices, solar energy systems, and rural cooperatives. Read more by visiting this web link.
Interestingly (and either coincidentally or not), a recent blogpost on the Huffington Post discusses another aspect of this issue, focusing on the fact that 1 billion people worldwide do not have ready access to clean water, and the burden of finding and fetching water falls to women and girls – who might otherwise have more time for education and business pursuits. Read more at “Water and Women: A Gender Crisis, a Global Opportunity.”
Take a minute to think about the 200 million hours that are spent – mostly by women and girls – every single day just to get fresh water, and how much more productively those hours could be spent. So, bringing more “power to the people” can really empower women!
Last week, some new numbers were announced regarding the impact that women-owned firms have on the U.S. economy. The Center for Women’s Business Research, with support from Walmart and the National Women’s Business Council, reported that women-owned businesses “contribute nearly $3 trillion to our national economy and create or maintain 23 million jobs.” While there is no disputing that looking solely at business revenues goes only part way toward measuring the full impact of a business in a community, exactly how to more fully account for the impact of women-owned businesses is a difficult question.
While the Center for Women’s Business Research has opened up an important discussion, they have not, in my view, added to the fabric of knowledge about women business owners and their enterprises in a wholly positive manner. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
Upon closer examination of the study, we observe that:
The estimates of economic impact are made using a purposive, non-random sample of only 417 businesses, conducted last year. A more complete set of usable data might have been better obtained from a larger, random-sample survey, or even from using Dun & Bradstreet data. One might also want to question the types of outputs computed in the model, and whether they are pre-recessionary or recessionary in their nature.
The model used was one developed to measure “the projection of secondary or multiplier effects from changes in direct sales in one industry within a study region. Multipliers can be estimated for a county, a state or for the entire nation (emphasis ours).” This appears to mean that a model developed for use in a single industry in a single region is being extrapolated to all industries over the entire country. This gives Womenable the heebie-jeebies.
While it is sexy to make comparisons between the revenues and expenditures of a company or group of companies with those of a nation, the inputs of the IMPLAN model used by the Center here and the components of Gross Domestic Product are likely very different. While the IMPLAN model is proprietary and not fully disclosed, it is most assuredly a case of “apples and oranges” to try to equate the impact of women-owned businesses with the GDP of nations.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m speaking here not only as the President and CEO of Womenable and a member of the women’s business community, but as the former Managing Director and Director of Research of the Center for Women’s Business Research and former Executive Director of the National Women’s Business Council. So, while it pains me to call out my colleagues, I do so in the spirit of making sure that the users of this new information are more fully aware of from whence it came, and with the hope that future efforts along these lines are more methodologically rigorous.
Some may feel that imperfect information is better than none at all, but Womenable believes that unassailable information – provided with more apt comparisons and fuller disclosure – does the women’s business community a much better service than does information that overreaches; that goes too far out on a limb without the underpinning of a more solid methodological framework.
As we all know, once information is out there it can take on a life of its own. While Womenable applauds this study’s goals and supports the overall message that accounting for the impact of women-owned firms should go beyond counting firm revenues (and, indeed, beyond counting currency spent by firms and their employees), we do not back this study’s execution nor its numerical conclusions.
We welcome a dialogue on this issue, and are willing to be proven too cautious. What say you all?
We womenablers already realize that empowering women is one of the surest paths to peace and prosperity, but that message was elevated to a wider audience over the weekend – with extensive coverage in the New York Times Sunday magazine and with commentary by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in the Huffington Post. (Click links above to read them – they are definitely worth your while.)
In their article, “Why Women’s Rights are the Cause of Our Time,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and wife Sheryl WuDunn – drawing from a soon-to-be-published book – state that “the world is awakening to a powerful truth: women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.”
This article is joined by a number of other worthy and thoughtful contributions from others in the Times’ special Sunday magazine “Saving the World’s Women.”
Even though there is a growing recognition that empowering women has both economic and social benefits – and a markedly stronger ROI than “gender blind” aid – we still have a long way to go until we reach gender equality. That point is made quite clearly by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President of Liberia Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who point out – in a recent op-ed piece in the Huffington Post – the stark facts that that the majority of the 2.5 million people globally who are victims of trafficking are women or girls, and that an even larger number of females – up to 100 million – are “missing” from the planet because of increased mortality from inequality and neglect.
This term of reference, “missing women,” certainly deserves more attention. Coined by Nobel laureate Dr. Amartya Sen about a decade ago, it refers to the fact that – because of pre-natal gender selection, infanticide of girl children, and increased mortality of girls and women because of discriminatory health and nutrition practices – there are about 100 million fewer females alive in the world today than there would be otherwise. Read more about this concept in this New York Review of Books article, “More Than 100 Million Women are Missing.”
Importantly, Sen concludes that one way forward for reducing the number of “missing” women is economic empowerment. He states that “gainful employment (i.e., working outside the home for a wage, or in such ‘productive’ occupations as farming), as opposed to unpaid and unhonored housework—no matter how demanding—can substantially enhance the deal that women get.”
Thank goodness that news is “slower” in August, so that this vital issue and the thoughtful commentary noted above can get a wider audience. Read them … and then pass them along!
