Women Get Ready, Get Set and Go Global

Today, women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men and becoming a major force both in the traditional and the new global e-business marketplace.

In November, The National Women's Council's Interagency Committee on Women's Business Enterprise prepared and presented to the 2000 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Conference a case study (http://www.nwbc.gov/oecd.pdf) on successful public and private initiatives for fostering entrepreneurship among women. It notes the significant role women have played in the recent economic prosperity and affirms the fact that "countries with high levels of economic activity and with the highest start-up business rates are the ones where women are well-engaged in entrepreneurial activity." More intriguing still, small businesses owned by women and minorities are focusing more intense efforts on exporting than those owned by non-minority men. The U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of International Trade, in a statistical report released last year, indicated that "America’s small businesses are big players in international trade — and their role is growing rapidly." Export data analysis (http://www.sba.gov/library/oitreport/oitnov99report.html) shows that 97 percent of U.S. companies that export are small businesses and women own 40 percent of all small businesses (http://www.sba.gov/news/speeches/alvarez112900.html).