Hurdles: Women Building High-Growth Businesses Brush, Carter,

¶ … Hurdles: Women Building High-Growth Businesses Brush, Carter, Gatewood, Greene Hart." http://.safaribooksonline./book/management/0131112015/firstchapter 1. Read Chapters 4 & 5 Clearing Hurdles.

Clearing the hurdles: Reflection paper

Women and work

"In nearly every society, it was traditional for men to work outside the house while women cared for households and families. It was a woman's 'role' to maintain the household and care for dependents. Over the past 30 years, women have entered the workforce to help support families all over the world" (Brush et al. 2004: Chapter 4: Family Role Expectations). It has been noted that more and more women are not only working outside the home -- women are also assuming more and more positions of real, tangible power that have parity with their male counterparts. Women have always 'worked' -- as housemaids, in factories, as domestic servants. Women on farms worked side-by-side males and their labor was equally crucial to the survival of the homestead. But in the traditional business world, women's labor was not rewarded with commensurate salaries with their male colleagues, no matter how hard the work, because of discriminatory attitudes to what was considered women's work. Very often, a women's lower salary would be justified because she did not need to support a family like a male, and it was assumed her salary was secondary to the family income.

However, the Internet has enabled many women who wish to take time to care for their children at home to work and still maintain an effective life-balance. Women can telecommute from home to many jobs. Many women entrepreneurs can run businesses from their home, using the web to advertise and sell their products. As the life of work and home becomes blurred in the new era, this has acted as a facilitator for many women to renegotiate what was often constructed as two entirety different spheres of life.

Chapter 6: Financial knowledge and business savvy

"92% of all women business owners reported using some outside suppliers of capital including family, friends, commercial banks and thrifts, finance companies, brokerage and leasing arrangements, and government loans " (Brush et al. 2004: Chapter 6: Challenges built into the system). Having some sort of outsider 'believe in you' is a virtual necessity for succeeding in business today, which often requires a substantial amount of startup capital. However, it is also necessary to 'believe in yourself,' and statistically, women are inclined to under-invest in themselves when they begin new businesses, which can set themselves up for failure. Virtually all businesses lose money in their first year of operation, and an entrepreneur must have the confidence as well as the financial savvy to know that there is market demand for the product or service that will build over time.

However, the question of what is the root of a lack of self-confidence must be considered. Is it that women have historically been discouraged from studying subjects that can be useful in starting up new businesses, such as accounting and economics? This lack of knowledge can create a self-perpetuating cycle of under-confidence. Women are not confident enough to study what are regarded as 'male' subjects, which can act as a further impediment to lucrative business opportunities and better salaries. Hopefully, as more and more women become educated in business studies and become more confident in the lucrative fields of science and technology, this cycle can be broken for the next generation of female entrepreneurs.

Reaction: "There is an underlying perception that women just don't have the know-how, the body of knowledge, the skills or the capabilities to lead a venture of substantial size" (p. 93).