I followed a link from Caterina’s site today to this article in Business Week Magazine titled Minting Women Millionaires which is well worth a read for those of you interested in women in business. It brings up a number of thoughts for me, and I’ll try to be succinct and coherent about them, but really as it touches on women, money and business, in many ways to get too far into it would be to share the first chapter or so of our book, which we’re not yet ready to do. Nevertheless.
The article itself is about this national program in the US called “Make Mine a $Million Business” aimed at creating one million women run businesses with revenues (not just gross earnings) over $1million by 2010. The motivation behind the program is that only 3% of women owned businesses have revenues at, or over $1million. I’m pretty excited about this program (knowing only its mission and not much of its details in terms of the whys and hows), and I’m very excited about the idea of the businessworld trying to increase the number of the multi-million dollar businesses out there that are run by women. As a feminist, it is actually really important to me that women reap the benefits of, and have access to the power associated with that kind of capital (and as the article points out, that actually isn’t all that much money these days). In fact, in our business life as Raised Eyebrow, we’re very committed to doing all we can to make some big dreams come true for some of our female entrepreneur clients, who have similar targets.
And here’s the but.
But, at the same time, one of the things that I think is interesting is the “why” of why there aren’t more women doing this already. Now, really none of these things has to be mutually exclusive, so don’t go thinking that I’m backing anyone team here, but in the course of writing this book and running our own business we think and talk about this a lot. And here’s the thing. I think that part of the reason that women aren’t reaching the $1million mark is because they don’t prioritize it. Now whether or not they should I think is another interesting argument, which I’ll leave for another time, but I fundamentally feel like many women don’t make this a priority. I know I don’t. When we started our business it wasn’t to make a fast (or slow) million bucks. Or even a few hundred thousand that would allow us to walk away. We were so much more interested in building a sustainable career path for ourselves that would, yes pay us well, but also that would allow us to have fulfilling careers. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think many women think that way. For starters, that’s what turned us off of the “typical” business book with the soaring gold dollar signs or dude sitting on his yacht: that wasn’t us. And really, that’s what I think is most interesting about this program, is the idea of women business owners building new images of what the successful millionaire looks like for the rest of us to choose as a model should we decide to follow that path.
The article also does note how relatively recent the idea of women gaining and amassing capital as a legal activity is in our society. And that is always something that blows me away. The stat they cite is 1975 (the year I was born!) as the year that women gained the legal right to own credit cards and have bank accounts without a male cosigner. And I know that here in Vancouver, Vancity (a BC Credit Union) was the first financial institution to grant a woman a mortgage without a male cosigner. And it was in my lifetime if I remember correctly.
So I guess what I’m saying is that we do need more programs like this and dialogue about the still woeful lack of women at the top of the powerhouse — be they in CEO positions or businessowners — but I also think the businessworld can really learn from the “small is beautiful” model that many businesswomen cultivate. Not because making a million bucks means you suddenly “become the man” but because that isn’t always the end goal, when people think about their careers and what they want out of them.
Anyway, lots to chew on there on the eve of our long weekend here in Canada. If you have any thoughts I’d love to hear them!
2 responses so far ↓
1 mariam // May 25, 2006 at 1:58 am
as a woman businessowner and a creative thinker, your post is something my business partner and i always discuss. I agree wholeheartedly that women dont make money their top priority but this little point is what makes women-run business so much more relevant and sensitive and so much more in touch with the environment- much more a complete whole than a business run by a man which could be a multi million dollar business but is just a business.
2 Emira // May 25, 2006 at 9:03 am
Miriam, I’m inclined to totally agree. And yet, I’m also quite invested in the idea that million dollar businesses can be different. They can be environmentally friendly for example. And it excites me to think about women going out there and building big “healthy” businesses where health is measured by more than the value of the stock. Once we’ve done that we can then serve as models for both men and women in business. (Which is not to say that there aren’t already these models, but rather that I don’t think we’ve quite reached critical mass).