The more things change, the more they stay the same. For more than thirty years, women have been starting businesses at about double the rate of men. For many, this was the result of hitting the glass ceiling or discovering that they didn’t want the long hours and imbalanced lives, poisoned corporate culture, and work that didn’t give them a feeling of significance, of doing what really mattered to them.
Although men were most affected by job loss in the Great Recession, during the recovery, while men are gaining jobs, women are actually losing them by the hundreds of thousands. Even women at the top aren’t safe: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, fired, criticized for characteristics that no one would bat an eye at in a man; Wall Street maven Sallie Krawcheck, known for her integrity and directness, first “restructured” out of Merrill Lynch, then fired from Bank of America, where she had headed the Global Wealth & Investment Management division.
They had managed to rise above the glass ceiling only to have it shatter beneath their feet. For other women, this ceiling has gotten impossibly low.
Predicting where these facts are leading us is a no-brainer—the number of women-owned businesses will likely increase at an even faster pace. Add to this group the people hitting the silver ceiling, especially in this economy, and we can see that the future for many women, over 50 especially, will be in entrepreneurship.
Women mean business.
According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, “If U.S.-based women-owned businesses were their own country, they would have the 5th largest GDP in the world, trailing closely behind Germany, and ahead of countries including France, United Kingdom and Italy.”
Think about what this means, about the impact we can have on the world simply by following our own lead, standing in our own shoes, and building our businesses on the visionary voice we all have inside us. Now is the time to leverage change to our advantage, to reinvent ourselves and our world through innovative and conscious businesses that hit the Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet, Profits.
Now is the time for women to lead the way into a greater future for all of us. For we women—at every age and stage—are the visionaries we’ve been waiting for!
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I am one of these women mentioned in the above blog. I was working as a seasoned network television director, a field dominated by men..for 30 years for ABC, CBS and NBC in NY and Los Angeles. I worked as a director for 9 daytime dramas..had a stellar reputation with the producers and especially the actors. Then I became a contract director on the famed soap opera, General Hospital here in LA, and after 3 years was told I was being terminated….till this day no one knows why. In my 30 years of employment, this never happened to me. I remember while working on General Hospital, when I asked for clarification about the scripts, or scenes, or when I flagged things that were not fair, I was chastised. I once told my boss, who was a woman, that if I were a man doing the same things, I would be praised and she went ballistic on me. Here’s the whamo..I haven’t worked in my field since that show. I know that if I were a man, I would have been picked up immediately by another show. Here I am, 30 years of professional entertainment work and 3 Emmy Awards under my belt, and I can’t find work. So I’ve been reinventing myself, as so many women are, who’ve been pushed out for doing well. What a journey!
Thanks for sharing your story, Mary. It’s all too familiar. What strikes me most is that you were so obviously so good at your job. I know that about you. And, you have the Emmys to prove it! So many of us were raised with this idea that if you work hard and do a good job, you will succeed. But for women, that’s too often a lie. You and I both broke the glass ceiling when for a woman to succeed, she had to be either a “bitch” or a “whore.” More women are succeeding today, but they still are vastly underrepresented at the top. Women are 56% of the workforce in the U.S., but less than 3% of Fortune 1000 companies have female CEOs.
Business, especially corporate, (and academia,) is still set up on the win-lose paradigm. To win, someone else always loses, whether they deserve to or not, and even if you win, you are always at risk of losing, out of nowhere, for no good reason. So the question is, what are we going to do about it? I think that’s one of the reasons more women like you, (and me way back when,) are starting their own businesses, and why more women must and will. It’s up to us to create the win-win business model and show that it works. The more of us who do this, who reach deep inside and create businesses and careers based on what matters to us, based on bringing out the best, the visionary, in our teams and ourselves, the more we can change business, and society as a whole.
Although we’ve been at it since the suffragettes, the glass ceiling, and especially the silver ceiling are confronting our leadership future. If you watch “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, you’ll know that co-host Mike Brzezinski recently published a book called, “Knowing Your Value: Women, Money and Getting What You’re Worth.” This book highlights how women in power, generally, are viewed as “bitches,” but men who behave the same way are seen as great leaders. It’s nice to see that more men are finally catching on!:)
Mary from me to you and to all the women who will follow, keep on keepin’ on the reinvention journey! Pls. let me know how I can serve you as you unleash your greatness and re-awaken your visionary within — I know you are being called to light the way for those to follow. Big hugs Mary!