Women Take Lead In Starting Business Female Entrepreneurs Now Own More Than A Third Of Businesses

Nancy Engel launched an herbal-products line with $30 from her last welfare check. She’s now moving into the mail-order business.

Corporate accountant Caroline Sanchez Crozier wanted to spend more time with her sons. And she had an uneasy feeling that as a Mexican-American woman, there were obstacles to her advancement. Casting out on her own, she founded a computer-services business. It now employs her husband and eight of her 10 siblings.

In search of balance between job and family, freedom from genderbased barriers in corporate life - and just plain economic survival - women are going into business for themselves at far higher rates than men.

As recently as 1970, women owned fewer than 5 percent of businesses. Today, women own more than one-third of businesses, according to census reports and independent research. That share is projected to rise to 40 percent by 2005.

Small business in particular has become the new economic proving ground for women. It’s a tough place to be, because many small firms fail. But business owners say it can also be exhilarating.

“It’s a golden age of entrepreneurship for women business owners,” said Hedy Ratner, who runs the Women’s Business Development Center, a training outfit in Chicago.

“It’s our time to blossom and to fly,” said business owner Debi Klein. Her suburban Washington store, which sells bird feeders, has survived recession and relocation.

The long-term impact of female business owners on the workplace and society could be fundamental. Some researchers say women are more likely to focus on business stability than growth at all costs. Some see women as more concerned with employee well-being.

In social policy, experiments with self-employment could yield ideas for getting families off welfare. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is interested in fostering “microenterprise,” an academic term for cottage industries with modest start-up costs. Example: family day care.

Yet women’s move into business is a trend that has not been thoroughly studied, said Boston University business Professor Candida Brush. Funding for government research is shrinking. Academic studies tend to focus on traditional topics that, more often than not, are of greater interest to men.

“What that means to me is that we really can’t understand the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in our society if we’re only looking at one population,” said Brush.

The stories of female business owners point to a wide range of motivation and experience.

When Nancy Engel was a teenager, her family lived on welfare after her parents broke up.

As a young woman in the 1970s, Engel was a free spirit, roaming the world in search of new experiences. While living in South America, she learned the uses of herbs for hair rinses and baths.

But when Engel came back to the United States in the early ‘80s, she was flat broke, with no profession and an infant daughter. She went on welfare for a year and a half.

Engel said she was leafing through a Family Circle magazine when she came upon an article about women who had “kitchen-table” businesses. She wondered if she could sell herbal rinses.

At that time, Engel was about to get married and go off welfare. So she took $30 from her last welfare check and bought herbs.

Engel started selling her herbal preparations at flea markets. She packed them in plastic sandwich bags, along with instructions that she’d typed and copied. Over the years, her marriage broke down, but her business - called The Sunny Window - endures.

“After I started with my card table, I made $200 one weekend before Christmas,” recalled Engel, 44, who now lives in Southboro, Mass. “I couldn’t believe it - I was flipping out.”

She began setting goals. “Maybe I could make enough for food and electricity,” she said. “Then I’d hear salaries. I wanted to make as much as a teacher made.”

Last year was an off-year for Engel, who said she sold less than $100,000 of goods. But she’s looking to build that up, and she’s gone into the mailorder business, offering herbal wreaths, gifts and soaps.

Engel also works with women who are trying to get off welfare. “A lot of them are ashamed,” said Engel. “I used to feel like that. When I moved out to the suburbs, everyone else had been to college. But I’ve learned over recent years to be proud of what I’ve gone through.”

The glass ceiling is an invisible barrier that keeps women from advancing to top corporate jobs. Studies have documented its existence. In the ‘90s, self-employment has become a way around.

“Your only other option is to start your own company,” said business professor Brush.

Caroline Sanchez Crozier, president of Chicago-based Computer Services and Consulting Inc., worked as a corporate accountant before going into business for herself nine years ago.

“It was obvious there was a glass ceiling for me,” said Crozier, 38. “Being a Latina was a negative factor. I finally found my niche when I saw that having my own business gave me the ability to control my future, whether good or bad.”

Crozier began by doing freelance accounting work part time. One of her clients was a computer company. She became fascinated with the business, and decided to try it herself. Her company provides computer consulting, technical services and software, mainly to Chicago public schools. Annual revenues exceed $3 million.

One of 11 children of Mexican immigrants, Crozier has become the economic linchpin of her family. Eight brothers and sisters work in her firm. Her husband Terry recently quit his accounting job to handle the company’s operations, while she focuses on marketing.

David Birch believes women are moving into business because it’s the right time and the right economy. Birch is president of Cognetics, an economic research firm.

It’s the right time because women have been an integral part of the work force for two decades. They’re better educated and have broader experience than women a generation ago.

It’s also the right economy, said Birch, because the shift from manufacturing to services generally favors women.

“We’re entering a new kind of economy,” said Birch. “The value comes from knowledge, not steel and harbors, boats and trains. We’ve added all these jobs in which women are just as good as men - why shouldn’t they start their own companies to do them?”