Today I am featuring a post by Cindy Krishcher Goodman, host of the Work/Life Balancing Act blog, a Miami Herald contributing columnist and a business owner herself. Before we get started, here are results of some recent surveys on women-owned businesses.
A survey of Women-Led Businesses in Florida by The Commonwealth Institute South Florida suggests:
The majority of women business leaders in Florida are assuming more job responsibilities, including marketing, sales and human resources.
Women leaders follow national legislation closely and indicate they are aware of the impact it will have on their business.
65 percent of women will itilize internally generated funds to finance their company growth.
90 percent expect to maintain or moderately grow their workforce.
Here are results of surveys by American Express OPEN State of Women-Owned Businesses Report and The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institute:
The growth in the number (up 54 percent), employment (up 9 percent) and revenues (up 58 percent) of women-owned firms over the past 15 years exceeds the growth rates of all but the largest publicly traded firms.
Women-owned firms are exceeding overall sector growth rates in seven of the 13 most populous industries.
Women-owned firms in the 2007-2012 period show stronger relative growth than do women-owned firms in the earlier period at the very highest revenue category — $1 million and above.
By Cindy Krischer Goodman
On Monday, I called Liza Mundy for a chat. I felt like I could have talked on the phone with her for days. She has just finished two years of interviewing men and women about work, family, money, power, marriage and decision making. Her findings are in a newly published book called The Richer Sex. I LOVE THIS TOPIC!!!
I included some of my interview with Mundy, along with interviews with female business leaders, into my Miami Herald column today on The Richer Sex. Assuming present trends continue, Mundy believes that by the next generation more families will be supported by women than by men.
I asked Liza if she thought women were uncomfortable being called "breadwinners," traditionally used to describe men.
Women who outearn their husbands might feel uncomfortable with the term, she says. But those that earn all the income in their families would be comfortable being called a breadwinner.
I asked her what has changed in the last decade and why she feels the next generation of women will outearn men.
They are outearning men because they are going to college and are better educated, she says. "Guys think they will graduate from high school and get a decent paying industrial or labor job and they are wrong. Single childless women in their 20s have a higher median income than their male peers."
Are women entrepreneurs contributing to The Richer Sex trend?
Women businesses are doing well. A lot who start their business, do it because they are not getting enough flexibility from their institutional workplace. Sometimes, their businesses do so well that they hire their husbands.
What are the conversations going on in America's households about downshifting and raising kids?
For working parents to reach the highest levels of Corporate America, either the workplace needs to change or someone needs to have flexibility or be the stay at home spouse. Workplaces can only do so much. I know fathers who want to spend more time with kids.
I asked one of the women I spoke with whether she feels she missed out by being the sole provider. She doesn’t feel that way. Because her husband is such good runner of the household, when she gets home from work she can devote time to family. She is the one with the rich vacation benefits and the long workdays but her husband is supportive and she feels she is an attentive mother.
Read the rest of Cindy's post here .
Click here to read the Time Magazine article by Mundy on how women are overtaking men as breadwinners and why that's good for everyone.
Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/worklifebalancingact/2012/03/men-women-money-power.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/worklifebalancingact/#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/27/2717414/women-becoming-the-richer-sex.html#storylink=cpy