¶ … 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,...

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…