Recently one of our competitors ran a column that was baffling,
anachronistic, contradictory and patronizing to all
entrepreneurs.
The column posed the question "Do men and women do
entrepreneurship differently?" Hardly an original question,
but to be honest, we've asked it, too. In fact, a decade ago
when women entrepreneurs were considered first an aberration, then
a phenomenon, many struggled to come up with definitions and
explanations. But if I've learned anything in the ensuing
years, it's that all business owners tend to define themselves
first as entrepreneurs and consider their gender secondary to their
business pursuits.
The author of the column sees things differently. Why? Well, he
met one entrepreneur, Barbara Grogan, who founded a $10 million
company--Western Industrial Contractors Inc. in Denver--chairs one
of the branches of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Denver Chamber
of Commerce, and serves on the boards of several corporations,
including a Fortune 500 company. Sound good? Not good enough,
apparently, because the author takes the entrepreneur to task for
not growing her business to $100 million. Grogan is somehow a
deviant entrepreneur because she made a choice to keep her business
in its current debt- and mortgage-free state.
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But the author provides Grogan an out. It's not really her
fault, he says; it's her genetic destiny. Let me quote:
"Throughout history women have been nest builders . . . "
Oh, and yes, we also talk more than men. Apparently these
tendencies were imprinted on women long ago when, according to the
author, men were out hunting for critters to eat and women were
"back at the cave, jabbering all day to their
children."
Now, I don't want to mislead you; the author doesn't
claim that nest-building is a necessary business evil. But for some
unknown or unclear reason, it just doesn't work for
entrepreneurs. No, in the author's entrepreneurial future,
"we'll still see hunter men, taking big risks and creating
empires, while most entrepreneurial women are content to emulate
Barbara."
What world does this man dwell in? I know a lot of male
entrepreneurs who would be very happy to be like Barbara. It's
the '90s--the 1990s--and real men actually admit to enjoying
their family time. But more relevantly, has the author heard of
Estee Lauder, Muriel Siebert, Mary Kay Ash, Lillian Vernon or Marcy
Carsey? Despite their jabbering genes, these women managed to
create empires.
Or how about those (Silicon) Valley "girls"? Sandy
Lerner co-founded Cisco Systems Inc. and, with her partner,
pocketed $170 million when she left. Last year, Kim Polese
co-founded Marimba Inc. of Palo Alto, California (she's now
president and CEO), where she's creating Internet software.
Are these women mutants? Has their genetic code betrayed them?
Or is this a sign of the times? I would like to remind anyone who
buys into this hunter/jabberer propaganda that women have only
recently been "allowed" entry into the entrepreneurial
ballpark. Sure, some (the aforementioned legends, for instance) set
an early pace. But for most women, running a business wasn't an
option until the late '80s. And since that time, not only have
women started at least twice as many businesses as men, but their
success rates are higher.
Does that mean women make better entrepreneurs than men? No,
that's as ridiculous an assertion as the one the article's
author makes. Entrepreneurs are individuals. And they succeed or
fail on the merits of their ideas, ethics and attitudes--not on
whether they have one or two X chromosomes.
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