It's been 88 years since American women won the right to vote. It's been 44 years since it became illegal in the United States to bar someone from hire or promotion based on the person's sex. And it's been 32 years since quotas limiting women's enrollment in colleges and other education programs were outlawed in this country.
American women are clearly participating in greater numbers in spheres that were once closed to them. Today, they outpace men in enrollment and graduation in bachelor's degree programs.
However, the world of business is still largely a man's world. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2002 Survey of Business Owners, 57 percent of businesses are owned by men. Women-owned businesses account for 28 percent of total businesses; 12 percent are owned equally by men and women.
But the survey also found that the number of women-owned businesses are growing at a rate double that of other businesses nationally.
A significant portion of women-owned businesses — about a third — are in the health and social services sector, the survey found, and women also own a sizable portion of these industries nationally. Among social assistance businesses, 72 percent are owned by women, as are about half of all nursing and residential care facilities.
Ann Carter, owner of Aurora Health Care Clinic, is one of those women. She started her own practice 10 years ago because she thought the minimum number of patients tended per day required by hospitals robbed her of the ability to give patients the quality care they needed. She wanted to offer more. Carter said the majority of patients at her clinic tend to be women.
“We give ourselves time to do problem solving for their issues,” Carter said, “and talk about prevention and wellness, and educate patients; nurse practitioners tend to do a lot of patient education.”
Carter said she sees a lot of women who are motivated to open their own businesses and practices. She said it's a different climate today for women who want to own their own businesses than it was when she was a child.
“When I was growing up, women were an extension of the household,” she said. “You were expected to stay home, take care of the kids, do the housework, have the dinner read for the husband when he came home.”
Now, she said, women have options to participate in many other ways, as well.
For some women, the job of running one's own business coincides with the start of a family.
“Finding time and energy to maintain a business and family isn't easy,” said Mary Graber, owner of Mountain Mary's Tea Room and Gift Shop. “If you have a business open to the public, you have to open it X-(number of) hours a day. But on the other hand if you have children who are sick, you have to be with them. It's challenging sometimes to maintain it all.”
But women who are their own bosses have an advantage in some ways over those who are employed, at a time when maternity leave and daycare services are big issues for workers, especially women.
“The one thing about (being a business owner) is you are able to have that flexibility,” Graber said. “You don't have to get permission from anyone to stay home.”
Tinker Berson opened Tinker's Rainforest Deli more than two years ago, after her son had grown and after she'd spent more than a decade managing coffee and restaurant establishments. Like Carter, she wanted to provide the services in her field to people in a way that allowed her to give them more one-on-one time, care and attention. “Less corporate,” she said.
“I wanted it to keep it small and quaint,” Berson said. “I wanted to offer something more healthy and conscientious.”
She said there are many more resources available now for a woman who wants to run her own business, such as women's business networks, than there were when she was growing up.
But perhaps as important to the success of women-owned businesses as any formal organization or federal law is the wider change in attitude toward women business owners that has come since the time that many of today's entrepreneurial women were growing up.
Berson cited the enthusiastic support of local residents who were her customers when she worked as a manger for local businesses, and who cheered her move to open her own shop and backed up their support with patronage.
“I've got so much support from the community,” Berson said. “It's been wonderful.”
Reach the reporter at news@alaskastar.com
