Where are all of the Women Entrepreneurs?

Where can a potential job seeker find the largest amount of open jobs? They’re open in nearly every community, people with all levels of education can apply, and the income potential is unlimited for those who are willing to start small and work really hard. The industry isn’t important because this job spans all industries and every sector of the economy can use these people in large numbers. What’s the job? The job is entrepreneur and if you have a passion for starting something from scratch and growing in to something substantial you could be the nation’s next great business owner.

How bad do we need entrepreneurs? The Obama administration as well as both houses of congress are allocating as much money as they can to stimulus packages that puts money in to the hands of entrepreneurs who want to start a business and it’s one of the few jobs that has a government agency that exists solely to create more.

Although the nation can use an almost infinite number of entrepreneurs, there is a segment of the population that is largely under represented: Women. It’s not that there aren’t enough women who have the skills to open a business. There are large amount of women trained in disciplines that need business owners but they aren’t pursuing this path. Only 35% of all entrepreneurial activity is from women and only 0.24% of women have started a business in 2011. These statistics are much too low, according to analysts.

Why is there a critical shortage of women entrepreneurs? A recent study raises two possible causes as a result of the extensive research done by organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, the largest foundation committed only to promoting entrepreneurs.

The first reason may be that women, when examined as an entire gender, have a desire to have a more balanced life between work and family. Because forming an LLC or other type of business takes a much larger amount of time than working for an established company, large amounts of women may not want to commit to such an endeavor.

Second, studies show that women have a tougher time securing funding in order to start a business. Still, the authors of this study stress that the issue probably is not a gender issue. Instead it is an economic problem. As more women enter the business startup community, that will create even more jobs and more opportunities for women causing the problem to slowly subside. That is, if the small business community, including the Federal government encourages women to realize their entrepreneurial vision.