More Women Starting Businesses Isn’t Necessarily Good News

[ismnotwasm]

Quite honestly, I don't know what to make of this article. Are they talking about a brain drain, loss of talent or if women go their own way control is lost? There's a sour grapes feel to it as well. I'd appreciate opinions. Ironic that the woman writing it started her own business.

MORRA AARONS-MELE
Morra Aarons-Mele is the founder of Women Online and The Mission List. She is an Internet marketer who has been working with women online since 1999. She helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first Internet chat, and launched Wal-Mart’s first blog. Morra tweets at @morraam.

New data show women starting new businesses at a “torrid” pace, according to an American Express analysis of Census Bureau figures. Between 1997 and 2014, the number of women-owned businesses in the U.S. rose by 68 percent. They are starting an estimated 1,288 companies each day, up from 602 in 2011-12. They are starting businesses twice as fast as men.

Why are women starting businesses so fast? Women self-report that they often start businesses often to seize control of their time and schedule at work. And I understand the pull of leaving a strict corporate job for your own venture; I started my business in direct defiance of working for someone else.

Greater rates of small business creation seem like a good thing, but the economic impact of most women’s small businesses may not be what’s best for women, their families or the economy in the long run. As Alicia Robb from the Kauffman Foundation notes, “Less than 2 percent of women-owned firms reach that [million dollar] revenue threshold, and that is the same exact percentage as a decade ago.”Women-owned businesses are disproportionately in industries where the median receipts are less than $225,000 (and businesses with receipts less than $100,000 are more likely to fail). Most women struggle to replace their corporate salary, and 88% of women owned businesses are sole proprietorship, non-employer firms.

If women face lower upside in starting businesses, why do they do it? Perhaps because the fire of entrepreneurship is still preferable to the frying pan of established corporations.

Yes, women are graduating from college in higher numbers than men and permeating the workforce — at least at the entry and middle management levels. The women who make it to leadership roles perform better than their male peers, by several metrics. More women are C-suite executives than at any time in our nation’s history.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/more-women-starting-businesses-isnt-necessarily-good-news/