This report investigates the state of women’s entrepreneurship in rural areas and for Indigenous women through in-depth interviews, and surveys of entrepreneurs and local governance leaders across the United States. Key findings include:
- Infrastructure challenges that hinder business growth – lack of reliable internet access and transportation, for example – persist.
- Thanks to the gradual disappearance of small bank branches, there is a severe lack of funding options for aspiring entrepreneurs who can’t self-finance.
- Rural and Tribal entrepreneurs need stronger networks, including online, to find guidance from peers and mentors.
- In rural and Tribal areas, state and local-level governments and institutions are well-positioned to capitalize on the trust they hold and to provide programming tailored to local conditions and needs.
This research builds upon the findings in our Women’s Entrepreneurship in Rural, Tribal, and Underserved Communities Literature Review.
Increasing small and emerging businesses’ participation in federal contracting is a winning proposition: it boosts critical economic actors, while also affording the government higher quality and low-cost purchasing options. The Women-Owned Small Business contracting program should help achieve this goal by narrowing the large gap between the universe of WOSBs eligible to sell to government, and the far smaller number of those companies who actually certify their status and bid on contracts.
NWBC has commissioned research by the Library of Congress’s Federal Research Division to determine the impact of differences between small business contracting programs, and their beneficiaries’ experiences with federal procurement. With this knowledge, agencies and private sector will be able to refine program administration to maximize opportunities for WOSB participants, and to diminish disparities in success in the federal marketplace.
This report includes FRD’s initial findings from a literature and data review regarding the WOSB contracting program.
Conducted in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau and led by Dr. Adji Fatou Diagne from its Center for Economic Studies, “The Metamorphosis of a Woman Business Owner: A Focus on Age” offers critical insights into how age impacts the types of businesses women own, the industries they enter, and the motivations behind their entrepreneurial journeys.
Why this matters now: The entrepreneurial landscape is changing, with more young women launching businesses and older women breaking into capital-intensive industries traditionally dominated by men. With data showing an impressive 10.5% increase in women business owners under 45 from 2012 to 2020, this report reveals the growing diversity in women’s entrepreneurial journeys.
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NWBC is excited to unveil our latest research report Engineering Change: The Blueprint for Strengthening Women’s STEM Entrepreneurship. In the STEM field, women are underrepresented and consistently face challenges when starting and while owning their businesses in these sectors. Government intervention such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act sought to expand opportunities in disadvantaged communities through large investments in manufacturing, clean energy, and infrastructure projects.
We performed this report to further our understanding of female entrepreneurship in high-yield and high-growth industries. The findings in this report suggest that federal policy could positively impact women STEM entrepreneurship.
This literature review summarizes research and scholarship on women’s entrepreneurship in rural, Tribal, and other underserved communities. These populations each face unique socio-cultural, infrastructural, and other challenges, and draw on resulting strengths to overcome financial barriers, limited access to training and mentorship, and wild cards like the COVID-19 pandemic. This report documents gaps in data and sets the stage for further analysis of rural and Tribal women entrepreneurs’ lived experiences.
The National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) is pleased to release the first portion of an ongoing research project on women’s entrepreneurship in high-yield and high-growth industries. The report, “An Illuminating Moment: Lighting a Pathway for Women Entrepreneurs” was created by KEEE, Inc. and includes a detailed literature review, data analysis, collection of policy recommendations and compilation of key resources, all focused on understanding how women entrepreneurs find success and encounter struggles in STEM and STEM-adjacent fields. The second portion of this research will be released later in 2024.
On June 16, 2010, a summit of women business owners was held in Salem, Massachusetts, at the historic Hawthorne Hotel. Since the earliest Colonial times, Salem has been a major commercial center in a regional economy based on industries as varied as international maritime spice trade and textile manufacturing. Now, as the Greater Boston/North Shore region builds a twenty-first century economy based on tourism, technology and creativity, women entrepreneurs have the opportunity to play a key role. At this summit, women business owners on Boston’s North Shore shared their priorities, challenges and concerns to help the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) to articulate policy recommendations for the consideration of the President, Congress, and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).
Hosted and facilitated by the NWBC in conjunction with the Enterprise Center at Salem State University, this summit was the ninth in a series of town hall meetings held around the country beginning in March 2007. The Salem event brought together over 200 women entrepreneurs, NWBC members, and government agency representatives for candid, lively discussions of business challenges and possible policy solutions. As at other NWBC town hall meetings before and since, a subsidiary benefit was the opportunity for business-to-business networking among the region’s women business owners.
The National Women’s Business Council is a bi-partisan federal advisory council created to serve as an independent source of advice and counsel to the President, Congress and the SBA on economic issues of importance to women business owners. Council members are prominent women’s business owners and leaders of women’s business organizations. The Council’s mission is to promote bold initiatives, policies and programs designed to support women’s business enterprises at all stages of development, from start-up to success to significance.
The Enterprise Center at Salem State University (www.enterprisectr.org) acts as the North Shore’s small business incubation and growth center, helping to grow businesses at every stage of development through skill building and support, and serving as the voice of the small business community through advocacy and action.
This paper provides a foundation for the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) to develop and launch a major initiative targeted to helping women achieve high levels of business growth. NWBC is the single government organization that focuses exclusively on ensuring that this nation’s economy realizes the full potential of one of its fastest growing segments – women-owned businesses. Integral to achieving this mission is to be a catalyst for women-owned businesses creating jobs and generating revenue.
This paper reviews the growth-trends of women-owned businesses, reports on what differentiates the women who own the largest, fastest growing businesses from those with smaller businesses, and concludes with a proposed strategic platform for action.
The phenomenal growth of women-owned businesses has been making headlines for 25 years. Women consistently have been launching businesses at nearly twice the rate of men. As important, their growth in employment and revenues has continued to outpace the economy.
Even as the nation’s economic growth slowed, employment in women-owned firms continued to expand while men-owned firms were contracting.1 Furthermore, projections indicate that the trend in employment growth among women-owned firms will continue. The Guardian Small Business Research Institute projects that women-owned businesses will create 5 to 5.5 million new jobs by 2018 – more than half the 9.7 million new small business jobs expected to be created and about one-third of the 15.3 million total new jobs anticipated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics by 2018.2
Women-owned businesses already are serious players in this nation’s economy. An economic impact study conducted by the Center for Women’s Business Research and the National Women’s Business Council documented that majority women-owned firms today are driving more than 23 million jobs – both directly and indirectly.
However, although the gap has been narrowing, women-owned businesses continue to lag men-owned businesses, and are under-represented in the top revenue categories. Only 3% of majority women-owned firms have revenues over $1 million compared to 6% of majority men-owned businesses. As of 2008 – the latest year for which data are available – the average revenue of majority women-owned businesses is 27% of the average revenue of majority men-owned businesses.
Looking at the trends from a more positive perspective, a substantial number of women now own and lead businesses over a million dollars, and many of these businesses are multi-million dollar enterprises. The number of women-owned businesses with $1 million or more in revenue grew 2,000% between 1977 and 2002. While the proportion of women-owned businesses over $1 million (3%) may seem small, this translates into more than a quarter of a million women-owned enterprises. Further, 20% of all businesses over $1 million are owned by women, and women-owned businesses are found at all levels of revenue. In fact, of the women-owned businesses over $1 million, 35% are over $5 million, 2% are over $50 million, and a fair number have revenues over $1 billion. A recent Kauffman Foundation publication reporting on a survey of high tech firms concluded that women and men entrepreneurs are equally likely to succeed given similar conditions. Clearly, the data substantiate that women have the vision, capacity, and perseverance to build thriving companies.
This is a group of business owners that already is having a measureable impact on the nation’s economic health. However, there is tremendous untapped and unrealized potential for these businesses to make an even greater contribution to the nation’s economic health, particularly in the critical area of job creation.
On behalf of the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC), Hart Research conducted two focus groups on August 31, 2011, among 13 self-described “established” or “aspiring” female entrepreneurs attending the “Women in Green” Forum in Santa Monica, California. It should be noted that the findings presented here reflect the fact that nearly all of the participants are in the early stages of establishing new business ventures. It also is important to remember that our participants made a conscious choice to attend (and pay for) the Forum, a fact that may differentiate them significantly from other entrepreneurs in the green sector (or other sectors).