Does your business count? Perhaps not-at least, not under new
definitions that the Census Bureau used when performing its most
recent survey of women-owned businesses.
In its 1992 survey, the Census Bureau defined women-owned
businesses as those with female ownership of 50 percent or more,
including public companies. But in its recently released "1997
Survey of Women-Owned Business Enterprises," the Census Bureau
changed its definition to include only privately held companies
with 51 percent or more female ownership. The result? According to
the survey, the number of women-owned businesses dropped from 6.4
million in 1992 to 5.4 million.
The change was made to be consistent with government procurement
guidelines, under which businesses must have 51 percent female
ownership in order to be certified as women-owned. And, in
releasing the data, the Census Bureau was careful to note the new
definitions and to point out that, after adjusting data from both
years to allow for "approximate comparisons," the number
of women-owned businesses actually increased 16 percent between
1992 and 1997.
| | | Next Step | | To voice your opinion about the
guidelines we should use to classify women-owned businesses, e-mail
Lynn Sheri King at lynn.king@sba.gov. |
| |
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Still, the new count effectively ignores two large segments of
women-owned businesses: public companies (even those that are
majority women-owned) and companies owned equally by
husband-and-wife teams or other male-female partnerships. In fact,
the Census Bureau noted that its survey counted 2 million
husband-and-wife partnerships, which under the new definition could
not be considered women-owned.
Julie Weeks, director of research at the National Foundation for
Women Business Owners (NFWBO), understands the reason for the
change, but the image the new numbers convey concerns her. (The
NFWBO, which uses government figures on the number of women
business owners as a starting point for its own, most recently said
there were 9.1 million women-owned businesses in 1999, and is
waiting to issue new numbers until it decides how to deal with the
new Census definitions.) "If you just look at the number of
firms now counted and the employees and revenues counted,"
Weeks says, "people would get a mistaken impression about the
economic contribution of women-owned firms, thinking it to be a lot
less than it truly is."
How will that mistaken impression affect women's access to
capital and assistance? Will bankers be less likely to lend to you
if they think women-owned businesses are a declining breed? Will a
smaller pool of women entrepreneurs be seen as deserving a smaller
slice of the government pie?
The answers to these questions remain to be seen, but Acting
Chief Counsel for Advocacy Susan Walthall believes the new
statistics offer a valuable opportunity to open a dialogue about
women-owned businesses. The SBA Office of Advocacy is one of many
organizations working to ensure the new numbers are understood in
context. To that end, on May 1 the National Women's Business
Council (NWBC) sponsored a task force meeting that included
representatives from the Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve, the
NFWBO and the SBA as well as members of various small-business
organizations, academicians and entrepreneurs.
The goal, says NWBC deputy director Lynn Sheri King, was to
devise widely accepted guidelines for what constitutes a
woman-owned business in time for the 2002 economic census. The
issue is representation, stresses King: "Policy-makers look to
data sources for information. If women who own 50 percent of a
business aren't counted, they won't have the seat at the
policy-making table that they rightly deserve."
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