Women Pursuing Entrepreneurial Life Over Corporate Ladder

A growing number of women are choosing the entrepreneurial life rather than climbing the corporate ladder.

It’s easy to see why when you hear the stories of women business owners who tried working for corporations and found a better way.

It’s also easy for today’s women to forget what it took to get where they are in business.

That’s why it is important for businesses to take note of the “Paths to Entrepreneurship.”

The national survey on women entrepreneurs was announced recently by Catalyst and The National Foundation for Women Business Owners.

Many women business owners say they left the corporation simply because they wanted to pursue a great business idea. But many other women cite lack of flexibility in their jobs, not having contributions recognized, not being taken seriously and feeling unchallenged at work.

If corporations want to keep talented women in their ranks, they need to be cognizant of these frustrations.

At the same time, “many women are inclined to take for granted what they’re given or where they are,” Adrienne Arsht, chairman of the Totalbank in Miami, said in an interview following her keynote speech at the announcement.

Arsht described the hilly landscape that was her career climb.

Now 56, Arsht said her parents were both lawyers. Her mother was the third woman to be admitted to the bar in Delaware. A generation later, Arsht was just the sixth. When she applied to her law school of choice, her parents were told no, “a man would do more with the education.”

After law school, she landed a job in the legal department of Trans World Airlines. Her entry: a federal affirmative action mandate. “I was hired because they had to,” Arsht said.

She regrets she didn’t grow up playing sports. When business was done over a golf game, she chose to participate by driving the cart. That way, she wasn’t shut out.

Arsht described her stunned reaction when she attended a corporate meeting at the Union League Club in Chicago and was told she must enter through the kitchen. Women weren’t allowed through the front door of the all-male club. Rather than miss the meeting, she acquiesced.

“When asked today why I am a feminist or why don’t I relax, I remember that story,” she said. Women now are allowed as members at the Union League Club.

Arsht said she has learned to speak but not to “come out swinging.” It may not be discrimination; sometimes you just have to learn how to get things done, she said.

She ended up in banking through holdings held by her husband, Mike Feldman, former legal counsel to presidents Kennedy and Johnson. One was Totalbank.

“When he decided to sell it, I said, ‘Let me see if I can run it.”’ The situation was ripe for sexism and naysaying.

The word was that “Mike had given his wife a toy to play with. ‘Isn’t that cute?”’ she said. “I picked up and repaired it. Now it’s my toy, and I’m having fun.”

Arsht is having fun making acquisitions. Totalbank is acquiring Florida International Bank, which will give it 17 branches and $420 million in assets. More acquisitions are planned.

She said women have to keep plugging away in their own companies to change the thinking. “Women by definition of being female are given more opportunities,” she said.

Arsht recommends today’s businesswomen seek out mentors, both male and female; hire women and patronize women business owners and professionals; and participate in the business community even if you’re not asked.

For the women who follow Arsht either in corporate or business life, plenty of work remains.

The challenge now is to get this survey information heard, not just by women business owners, but also the other half of the population, those who sit in most CEO and boardroom chairs across the nation.