Maybe it's because women are creating a business world all their own.
THE LETTER TACKED ABOVE MY desk comes from the president of a public-relations company in Los Angeles, who says INC. tells her all she cares to know about men in business. "My question is, Are there any women in business? Your magazine doesn't think so." Accusing us of "1952 thinking," she canceled her subscription.
It is a frequent complaint, and a valid one. Thumb through the pages of INC. -- or, for that matter, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Week -- and you'd swear that American business was still an all-male preserve. It isn't, of course. Women are quickly joining the ranks of corporate management (middle management, anyway). And among private companies, women now own more than a quarter of the nation's sole proprietorships. Most impressively, women are now starting new enterprises at more than three times the rate of men.
So where are they? Why aren't business-women more visible?
Chalking it up simply to sexism would be easy. But, at least as far as INC. is concerned, that would be wrong. I can't say our male editors are fully enlightened on these matters, but they do know something about marketing. And women, representing 17% of our readership -- more than any other major business magazine -- are the fastest-growing segment of our audience. So, if only for selfish reasons, we've been out there looking -- not for the gosh-it's-a-woman stories that underestimate everybody's intelligence and sophistication, but articles showcasing women-owned companies in ways that educate, challenge, and entertain our readers. What we've found, we've published -- Lore Harp, Sandra Kurtzig, Debbi Fields, Barbara Hunter and Jean Way Schoonover, Billee Huggard, among others -- which is to say, not much.
But we're not the only ones who search largely in vain. Commercial loan officers report that women rarely darken their doors. Venture capitalists can count their female clients without running out of fingers. Investment bankers often have a hard time naming even one woman who's taken her company public. Not even the women in these professions know where the women are. "We really don't see many female faces in here at all," admits a mystified Shirley Nelson, one of California's few female bank presidents. Her institution, Summit Bank, in Oakland, specializes in small-business loans. "You'd think they'd seek me out, being a woman."
The difficult question, of course, is whether female business owners deserve any more attention than they're getting. The evidence I've been able to put together suggests that women-owned companies grow slower and post lower profits than companies owned by men. Women hire fewer employees than men; they raise less outside capital; and, as a group, they are three times as likely to run their tiny businesses out of their homes. The prestigious Committee of 200 -- a national organization of women who own businesses with more than $5 million in annual sales -- has only 236 members.
Is it the old-boy network that is holding women back? Or do they simply need more time to establish themselves? Are women merely doing business in little niches of the economy that don't warrant any more attention than the corner grocery? Or is it that the criteria for deciding what is new, interesting, and important are inherently biased toward a traditional and male way of doing business?
There are no definitive answers to such questions. What data exist are unreliable. And for every generalization, there are undoubtedly dozens of contradictory examples. Based on impressions gathered from many sources, however, I think I've found a pattern in the way women run their businesses that may explain why business-women have been so obscure.
One strong impression is that not all the women who are starting that phenomenal number of businesses are part of an entrepreneurial revolution -- unless you define entrepreneurship as any means of generating an independent source of income.
"Most of the women represented by the statistics are in microbusinesses that are going to stay small," says Paula Mannillo, who works with Women's Economic Development Corp., in St. Paul, Minn., which has worked with 2,000 women interested in starting businesses. "Many of these women are going back into the work force after raising kids or getting a divorce. They aren't out to build the biggest companies, and they're not doing it to stroke their egos." Mostly, these women are just trying to support themselves, to bring balance and flexibility to their lives in ways that the corporate world can't. And won't. They are out to redefine work, not to restructure the economy. What they are doing has much more to do with self-employment than enterprise.
Obviously, not all businesswomen are deaf to the old siren song of growth and expansion, wealth and power. But there is powerful evidence that women go into business for different reasons than men. And different motivations lead to a different set of measurements by which they judge success.
Women watch their profits (who doesn't?), but they also evaluate their performances in terms of opportunities well met, creative urges satisfied, employees that are challenged and fulfilled. By and large, they place a higher value on respect from peers, satisfaction from customers, and good marriages that produce kids whose heads are screwed on straight.
Oh, sure, men may claim to embrace some of the same ideals. But let's face it: these are not the hallmarks of male business culture. There aren't many men who stay up nights worrying about how to adapt their businesses to more human values. Nor are there many men who would follow the example of Edwina Muhawi. Her Sinbad Sweets, in Clovis, Calif., was listed on this year's INC. 500 as one of the nation's fastest-growing privately held companies -- a fact that is all the more remarkable given that she has two young children at home and chooses not to travel on business. For similar reasons, Joyce Huber and Carla Massoni, partners in Georgetown Employment Service, in Washington, D.C., have deliberately trimmed their client list and cut back their advertising.
"These women know that it really isn't possible to have it all," explains Paula Mannillo. "Not all at once, anyway. Women tend to see their lives more in phases than men do. And they go into business to have the freedom to work in sync with them."
From different motives and different goals come different ways of managing a business. Study after study show that women do a better job of encouraging and rewarding employees, of soliciting information and input, of seeking consensus. Men fight things out; women work things out.
