Show businesswomen some love this week

October 19th, 2006

In honor of National Business Women’s Week (the third week of October, as in October 16 through 20), I offer up these fascinating stats from recent reports by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Center for Women’s Business Research:

• In 2005, small businesses accounted for a whopping 99.7 percent of all the nation’s “employer businesses” (you know, businesses with paid staff).
• Said small businesses employed 57.4 million Americans — in other words, a staggering 50.6 percent of non-farm workers in the private sector.
• Women owners of larger businesses are just as likely as their male counterparts to have a long-term strategy for selling, handing down, or closing their business.
• While female and male business owners are equally motivated to sell their empires, women are much more likely to take into account how the sale will impact their employees.
• Women business owners are nearly twice as likely as male business owners to plan to pass their business on to a daughter or daughters (37% vs. 19%).

You, too, can do your part to support businesswomen and small business owners everywhere. Rather than buy from Starbucks or rent from Blockbuster this week, check out that indie coffee stand down the street that you’ve never tried and/or your local mom-and-pop video rental shop. Encourage your company to assemble a crackerjack team of independent contractors (aka freelancers), rather than hiring the usual behemoth creative agencies (unless of course, those agencies farm their work out to freelancers and treat them with love). And so on and so forth.

Entry Filed under: She's the boss