Celebrating Women's Equality
/by Amy K. Bassett
If you search the internet for “first woman millionaire” or “historical female entrepreneurs”, you are likely to come across the story of Madam C.J. Walker. While it’s debatable if her net worth ever reached a million dollars, her legacy as a successful entrepreneur can’t be denied. A black woman born to former slaves in 1867, she started a successful hair care business. She traveled across the country selling her products to other African American women and eventually opened her own manufacturing and training facility.
On August 26th we celebrate Women's Equality in the United States. This day commemorates the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the country based on gender.
Madam C.J. Walker built her business and rose through the ranks of successful female entrepreneurs in a time before the adoption of the 19th amendment. She passed away in 1919. I don’t think we can fully understand the challenges she would have faced building her business empire in a time before women had the right to vote and before automotive travel, telephones, and internet.
Today, in addition to modern day technology, women entrepreneurs have a valuable resource available to them that Madam Walker never had – SBA’s Women’s Business Centers (WBC). As the number of women entrepreneurs in the community grows to unprecedented levels, SBA has resources for women small business owners to survive and thrive amid the COVID-19 pandemic, including 136 WBCs located across the country. At WBC's, women entrepreneurs receive essential business counseling and training from these community-based centers. Each center tailors its services to help you navigate the challenges women often face when starting or growing a business.
The work that the WBCs are doing is extremely important right now, because while women-owned businesses are one of the fastest growing segments of the small business community - up from 5% of businesses in 1970 to 38% today – the opportunity gap persists and has been made worse by the pandemic. Women-owned businesses were 1.7 times more likely to close during the pandemic than their male counterparts.
While women today are facing their own unique challenges, things that Madam Walker wouldn’t have been able to fathom, challenges very different from her own, she had some good advice to share that remains relevant. She said, “Don’t sit down and wait for opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”
Of course, it is important for entrepreneurs to go out and make their own opportunities, but it’s also important to remember that help is out there and that no one has to take on the challenge of business ownership alone.
Amy K. Bassett is Acting Regional Administrator of the New England Regional Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration. You can find out more about services for women entrepreneurs in your community by reaching out to your local WBC in Connecticut: The Entrepreneurial Center & Women's Business Center at the University of Hartford or the Women's Business Development Council.
