Loooking For a Few Good ... Women!

This year I take encouragement from the fact that there were more women attending SxSW as leaders in the music, gaming and entertainment industry than ever before. I especially enjoyed the reports coming out of the workshop entitled: Breaking the Glass Ceiling -- Fearless Women Entrepreneurs. According to the event coverage from The Guardian, the event outcome hit upon a key principle that we at the SmartGirls' Way hold dear; support from other women is critical to overcoming the first hurdle of entrepreneurship -- the fear of failure.

Another hurdle that women entrepreneurs face is self-confidence in their strengths as women. A tri-University study released last week from Binghamton University, the University of Missouri and the University of Minnesota, attributes gender stereotyping as a primary barrier to women choosing entrepreneurship. The research was done to address a seemingly lack of role models among the pool of existing women entrepreneurs. Specifically, it unveiled a need to change the way entrepreneurship is discussed, portrayed and valued in dialogue with ALL genders.

And here is the Eureka moment for me. For the past few weeks, our founder has been interviewing women all over the country for the 100-100 - A SmartGirls' Way Project highlighting the success and strengths of women entrepreneurs. The issue is NOT that there aren't great role models out there confidently overcoming fears and gender barriers to build successful businesses. The issue is that not enough people know about them as a collective force, dramatically transforming the face of business in our country.

Events like the workshop at SxSW are a GREAT start to engage this collective force of role models. We want to take it to the next level by championing and celebrating the momentum and potential impact that women entrepreneurs bring to our economy.

If you know a woman entrepreneur who would be a great role model, tell us! What do you look for in a role model? What strengths do you most admire in those that have inspired you and ask yourself, what can they teach you about stepping up and launching your own type of entrepreneur?

Women Entrepreneurs: A World of Opportunity to Avoid "Group-Think"

By Tracey Collins

Something in Jean’s last post on Pride, Power and Prejudice really struck a chord with me: Men are three times more likely to receive a new business loan than women for the same business plan? Wow!  

After being at once discouraged and then curious, I wanted to find out: What is actually being done about this?  If more women were involved in the decision-making boards of our nation’s financial institutions, would this disparity still be true? 

Consumer Czar Elizabeth Warren and her newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seems to believe it with her efforts and aggressive stance on credit card transparency.  A Harvard Law Professor, Warren was the ‘outsider’ when she was appointed to chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to investigate the U.S. banking bailout.  Last week she was featured by iVillage in the story: "We need women on Wall Street,” where she paid tribute to a core characteristic that what we at The SmartGirls way like to call “Fairness.” 

For Warren, the economic crisis may have been avoided if there were more women on Wall Street; “Women are especially good at fighting on behalf of others and are often outsiders.” 

When asked about the recent financial crisis she explained that the outsider status was missing: "There were a bunch of insiders talking to insiders and that's how they ended up blowing up the economic world.”  

Her solution: “I want to see a lot of women get involved, a lot of women."

Source

On the same day, the President headed off for his trip to Asia.  I happened to check the White House White Board and watched the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Austan Goolsbee, give a pretty baseline summation driving the National Export Initiative – which has set the lofty goal of tripling our national exports from $1.57 trillion to $3.14 trillion by the year 2014.  This is a huge challenge given that in the last 10 years the US has actually fallen to an all-time low in exports and now lags behind Germany, India, China and Japan. 

The US Administration sees small business as a fundamental component to reaching this goal.  In fact, we are already contributing.  According to a 2006 International Monetary Fund Financial Survey, women business owners generate $1.9 trillion in sales each year; that is equal to the gross domestic product (GDP) of China.  

So it seems to me that there is a world of opportunity out there and while women owned businesses grapple with their own unique set of challenges, there is comfort in common travails, camaraderie and role models. 

When facing issues around gender bias, securing angel funding or even the implications of off-ramping my corporate career to take on a caretaking role, I’m going to take comfort in the fact that I am not alone.  There is a market need and we’re weaving together a very smart network to meet it.