How women business owners
cracked the glass ceiling
continued from pg. 12
In the 1980s, the Small Business Administration released
a report that mistakenly claimed almost all women-owned
businesses were home-based and had sales of under $10,000
per year - largely because data to the contrary wasn’t
available. Knowing this to be a factually misleading report,
the National Association of Women Business Owners’ then-
president, Gillian Rudd, held a press conference on the
steps of the U.S. Capitol to publicly call out the misguided
report, which kicked off the call for H.R. 5050. With the
belief that knowledge is power, this bill mandated that the
government collect more complete information on the
state of women-owned businesses.
Together, these pillars helped pave the road for women
business owners - and over the past 15 years alone,
women-owned enterprises have grown 1.5 times faster
than other small enterprises. Access to capital is crucial
for any business, and this legislation helped evolve long-
outdated practices and beliefs that unfairly favored men. In
recent years, online lending platforms like Funding Circle
are helping to create opportunities for all. There still may
be miles to go in continuing to equalize credit opportunity
for everyone, but this significant step in women’s business
history is surely worthy of celebration.
NOVEMBER 2018
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WINTER GARDEN MAGAZINE |
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