According to our report SHE MATTERS: 2012 Status of women and
Girls in Iowa, a 2012 report by American Express tracked the overall
growth and growth by industry of women-owned businesses across the
country. In the report, Iowa was listed as last in the nation in
revenue growth of women-owned businesses, and second to last in the
nation for increase in the number of firms and overall employment by
women-owned businesses.
But the national picture is much more reassuring. This
week, I received another article prepared by American Express OPEN, 10
Things You Didn’t Know About Women-Owned Businesses, that provides benchmarks
from studies of women-owned businesses in an effort to encourage more women to
put their business plans into action, and to provide a more accurate picture of
the business environment.
Here are the “10 things:”
1.
In the past 15 years, the number of women-owned
businesses grew by 54%; there are now 8.3 million women-owned businesses in the
United States (more than the number of
people in 50% of the world’s countries).
2. Despite
owning nearly 30% of U.S. businesses, women attract only 5% of the nation’s
equity capital; in first-year funding, women receive 80% less capital than men.
3. Women-owned
businesses employ 7.7 million people - 40% more people than three largest
employers — McDonald’s, IBM and Wal-Mart — combined (this is a 9% increase in employment over the past 15
years).
4. Women-owned
firms generate revenues of $1.3 trillion. Over the past 15 years, women-owned
businesses saw 58% increase in revenue, from $546 billion to $1.3 trillion now
- more than the combined market cap of Apple, Microsoft, GE, Google and Sony.
Revenue has grown more than twice the amount of U.S. population growth
during the same period of time.
5. The
industries with the fastest growth and greatest share of women-owned firms are
educational services, health care and social assistance, and entertainment and
recreation.
6. In seven
out of 13 of the most populous industries, women-owned firms are exceeding
overall growth.
7. The top
states for women-owned businesses are Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming and North
Dakota; top cities are Sacramento, Riverside, San Antonio, Houston, Baltimore
and Washington, D.C.
8. 2% of
women-owned businesses bring in more than $1 million in annual revenue, versus
5% of all firms.
9. As they
reach 5-9 employees or earn $250,000, women-owned businesses experience faltering
growth.
10. Of
women-owned businesses, 5.5% used a loan to get started, compared to 10.7%
overall.
As a next step in our ongoing work to address the issues reported in
SHE MATTERS, Chrysalis and the Iowa Women’s Leadership Project are creating a
handbook of recommendations for elected officials, communities, and individuals
to use in order to take action. The handbook will be entitled If SHE MATTERS to You, Here’s What You Can Do, and it will be printed for our distribution
this fall.
