Women Creating New Businesses-2x the Rate of Men
Women owned businesses are already creating new enterprises at a rate twice that of men (“+44%, from 5.4 million in 1997 to 7.8 million in 2007.”) Millions of women entrepreneurs already play a vital role in the world economy and yet their accomplishments, unique struggle, needs, insights and extraordinary contributions are almost completely unrecognized.
The Center for Women’s Business Research reports: “the number of women-owned firms is growing twice as fast as the number of businesses overall and represent 40 percent of all businesses in the United States. In addition, these firms generate nearly $2 trillion in sales and employ 12.8 million people accounting for 28.7% of non farm businesses”.
The US based research company ‘Catalyst’ reports Fortune 500 companies with 3 or more women on the Board gain a significant performance advantage over those with the fewest
- + 73% return on sales
- + 83% return on equity
- + 112% return on invested capital
Similar findings come from the McKinsey Report, “Women Matter” Those companies with the most women on their senior team show superior growth in equity, operational results and share price. If at least a third of the senior team is made up of women, then companies outperform those with no women on 9 criteria of organizational excellence. This doesn’t explain why women influenced companies have
unique strengths that enable it to achieve better results but it does underscore the fact.
Women should be better used in corporations and should be better recognized by corporate investors and funders.
Illuminate Ventures conducted research that proved organizations that are the most inclusive of women in top management achieve 35% higher ROE and 34% better total return to shareholders versus their peers – and gender diversity is particularly valuable where innovation is key.
An EEC study underscores the problem with the statistic that only 11% of executive committee members are women.
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