On The Town: Women Entrepreneurs Revitalizing America

Held at the Renaissance Center, the National Women’s Business Council had a quarterly public board meeting yesterday and DG3, along with other local businesswomen and entrepreneurs, was in attendance. The meeting was informative and empowering, and we learned about all they have been doing for women in the workplace, along with hearing a couple of inspiring stories of women helping women right here in Detroit.

Changing government policies to help women secure funding easily, increasing the number of women making investment decisions and improving outreach efforts to find women entrepreneurs are just a few of the many things they have and are hoping to accomplish. Through the council’s efforts and research, they have found that women are doing more than ever before.

“Another great thing that the council of research determined is that the number of patents obtained by women in the U.S. is equal to men,” said Teresa Nelson, board member, Professor at Simmons College School of Management and Director of the Entrepreneurship Program.

Below are a few quick stats from the NWBC:

1.    The U.S. has over 7.8 million women-owned businesses, earning $1.2 trillion in annual r receipts.

2.    An overwhelming 88.2% of these firms have no employees other than the owner, and 11.8% employ over 7.5 million people and have annual median receipts of $210,000.

3.    Women-owned businesses account for 29.6% of all business and 17.5% of business and 20.2% of business with employees.

4.    The economic impact of women-owned businesses have been estimated at $2.8 trillion, and more than 23 million jobs.

In the next year, the NWBC hopes to engage more entrepreneurship ecosystem stakeholders in the dialogue and the solutions. These stakeholders include policy makers, leaders, media and other influencers in the public, private and academic sectors.

The NWBC is a non-partisan federal advisory council created to serve as an independent source of advice and counsel to the U.S. Small Business Administration, Congress, and the White House on issues of impact. For more information, and to get access to some of the toolkits they have created for women business owners, visit www.nwbc.gov.