Is there a generation gap among woman entrepreneurs? This
question jumped out at me after my interview with one Gen X woman
and one older woman for a point/counterpoint discussion on
set-asides for the May "Women" column.
I set out to find information comparing female entrepreneurs of
different ages. Surprisingly, no such data existed. So I decided to
conduct an informal survey of my own, targeting women 18 and older
who own a business.
The solicitation process was, in itself, the first big
revelation. After contacting numerous colleges and entrepreneurial
organizations, I gathered a respectable number of women 30 and
older. But the initial beating of the bushes yielded very few woman
entrepreneurs under age 30 and a miniscule number aged 25 and
younger. This seemed especially puzzling in light of the expansive
number of younger males regularly featured in
Entrepreneur.
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Elizabeth Carlassare,
author of the upcoming book Dotcom Divas (McGraw-Hill),
discovered "the founders of [the dotcom companies studied]
fell into two categories: women in their late 20s who recently
graduated with an MBA from a good school; or older, seasoned women
who've had careers in the corporate world but, for a variety of
reasons, decided to strike out on their own."
The findings in our own unscientific survey uncovered that 42.1
percent of all the businesses were Internet/technology-based
service firms, but only 25.9 percent of these were run by women 18
to 29 years old. Women 30 to 39 years old dominated this ownership
category at 48.1 percent, while women 40 and older owned 25.9
percent of these firms.
When it comes to start-up capital, 25 percent of all the
businesses were self-funded; 14 percent were funded by the business
owner and her partners; and 10.9 percent were funded with help from
family and friends in addition to personal resources. As might be
expected, older women were more inclined to self-fund their
ventures. About 21 percent of entrepreneurs 30 and older fell into
this category—almost double those under 30 who went this
route.
More than half the women surveyed (52.3 percent) didn't find
their gender to be a barrier, though 19 percent did say it made
them work harder. When divided into age categories, the numbers
shifted—62.5 percent of women 30 and older said they faced
barriers or needed to work harder than male counterparts. Twice as
many of those 30 and older (62 percent) found being a woman to be
an occasional barrier as women 29 or younger (30.7 percent).
"The young, recent MBA grads don't seem to have the
notion of the glass ceiling and gender bias," says Carlassare.
"Older women see those barriers and have experienced gender
bias in their careers. That's part of the reason they [start
businesses]."
Obviously, this survey can't be used to draw broad
conclusions, but it does pose an interesting question of its own:
What parts will younger and older women play in the new
entrepreneurial/Internet revolution, and how will those roles
differ?