Five Things You Need to Know About Women-Owned Businesses

In the past, the world of business looked like a male-dominated dimension. Women were just the reliable presence in the shadow who organized the administration structure of the office. Fortunately, things have changed for the better, and the female creative and leadership capacity has gained much appreciation these last two decades. They inspire the world every day with their determination to defeat bureaucracy and stereotypes. Let’s see what you really need to know about women-owned business.

1.     The Number of Women-Owned Businesses Continues to Grow
In 2012, businesses owned by women increased in number with 53 percent more than in the last 15 years, which accounts for 9.9 million of companies in U.S. This is great news for women around the world. The patriarchy is starting to shrink and make room for a new age of gender equality. The top most successful companies led by women cover industries like a bakery, retail, information technology, fitness, beauty products, logistics and much more.

S’Well, a company that started out of the small budget of Sarah Kauss, is known to be the fastest growing women-owned business in the U.S. The owner came up with the idea of a water bottle reinvention that keeps the liquids for 24 hours. And since then the products have met a great success. The company reached a competitive revenue milestone last year when it earned $50 million.

2.     Women-Owned Businesses Enrich the Job Market
Female entrepreneurs have created many of the job openings for the candidate pool from U.S. There are almost 9 million people who work for women-owned businesses which are 40% more than the number of employees from IBM, Wal-Mart, and McDonalds combined.

This rise in employment capacity has generated $1.3 trillion for the entire nation. Since jobs are the primary source of income for any household, we can see that women are bringing a positive impact to the economic growth and welfare for their community. Furthermore, experts have already projected the future of the business world being half developed by women starting with 2018.

3.     Women’s Businesses Are about Innovation
Women are changing the face of the business industry as we speak. Surveys show that more than half of their companies are selling products and services that represent a novelty to the public audience. Their male competitors are rare in these innovative domains.

This makes women entrepreneurs a valuable new wave of empowering leadership and breakthroughs in technology, marketing, entertainment, and sales industries. The advent of wireless Internet and smart mobile devices clearly enabled women to break many barriers and develop their ideas as online businesses.

4.     Women-Owned Firms Win Government Contracts
Even though businesses are used to receiving support from the Government, this year, the women-owned firms received for the first time in history 5 percent of federal contracting dollars. This investment will benefit both the economic landscape and the more than 9 million women entrepreneurs.

In 2015, the government received from the private sector more than $430 billion in goods and services. One of the goals with this revenue is to redirect 5 percent of it to small businesses owned by women. This is actually a mandate that was supposed to become a reality more than 14 years ago. However, the government only now has succeeded to find resources for the project. As another way to help women-owned firms, the U.S. Small Business Administration has appointed many Women’s Business Center nationwide where entrepreneurs get help with marketing and loans advice.

5.     Female-Founded Start-ups are Better than Male Ones
The venture capital firm First Round Capital carried out a survey where 300 companies participated. The results showed that women entrepreneurs conducted their businesses better than men. The study also looked at influential factors that manipulate success such as age, previous experience, and education.

Taking all these into consideration, the results discovered something extremely interesting. If the company enjoys the presence of at least one female in its leading board, then it can outperform all-male companies by 63 percent.

All in all, the face of the business industry has started to change for the better. Now, the time is just right for any woman with the entrepreneurial ambition to enter the man’s world. While the patriarchy is still a reality,             there is a visible movement at the core of the business world that redirects the attention to diversity in the leadership positions.

By Graham Rand
Graham Rand is a Technical Writer, who graduated from University of Massachusetts, Lowell. At the beginning of his career, Graham worked in the IT field. Now he writes business articles for Survey Asisstants, one of the up and coming websites from the business industry.