Is It Harder for a Woman to be an Entrepreneur?

Scott W. Ventrella

Male or female, it’s not easy for anyone to grow scalable business. If it were, everybody would be doing it. But, historically, it has been much more difficult for women to get a foothold in the space. Women are often disadvantaged for a number of reasons. With the lack of female role models, careers interrupted by motherhood, and more, it has been much header for women to grow scalable businesses. One question to ask is: are times changing?

Slowly but surely, there has been a positive shift in a variety of areas:

• Women are breaking through at Fortune 500 corporations in the highest tier positions
• We’re witnessing more family/friendly working environments enabling a better work-life balance

There has also been an increase in role models which moves mountains for inspiring women:

• Melissa Mayer from Google being appointed CEO of Yahoo
• Lynn Tilton: founder of Patriarch Partners, a private equity firm and holding company managing 75 companies across 14 industry sectors with revenues in excess of $8 billion.
• Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. She is a pioneer for women and for being a simultaneous wife and mother.

While there is still a distance to go for full equality, these positive shifts are inspiring and show a change in work-place culture. What other advancements for women in business have you noticed (and/or experienced) recently?