This post was originally published on On Deck
America’s women-owned businesses employ 11.4 million people and generate over $2.1 trillion in revenue annually. But women still own just 22.3% of employer businesses, and women-owned businesses generate just 4.84% of all business revenue overall.
While bigger is by no means better, this disparity between the number of women’s businesses and their quantitative economic impact reflects the challenges that women entrepreneurs still face. The gender wage gap and hiring biases may drive women to become entrepreneurs while depriving them of equal resources and experience to do so.
Annie Zou, owner and photographer of America’s highest-rated women-owned small business, says that one of the biggest challenges for women entrepreneurs is being underestimated early on:
“As a young woman, I had to learn to lead with clarity,” Zou tells OnDeck. “I reminded myself to project an image of a confident, experienced photographer so that I could earn that level of trust in my clients. These days, I’m actually a lot more relaxed and casual – word-of-mouth and reviews do that part of the hard work for me now.”
To celebrate the continued success of women-owned small businesses against the odds, OnDeck analyzed the Yelp ratings of over 12,000 women-owned small businesses in
— Read the rest of this post, which was originally published on On Deck.
