Women in Business: A Trend That Is and Should Be Growing

By Collat School of Business at the University of Alabama at Birmingham

The women in business trend is on the incline, but this isn’t an ideal that’s always been expected. For centuries, women have battled a stereotype that involves staying home to cook, clean and care for the family. With a desire for greater opportunity for equality and overall improved satisfaction with life, women began to enter the workplace and have proven to be widely successful across various industries.

But with this success has come many challenges that have made it even more difficult to pave the way for other women in business.

Traditionally, women have not fared as well as men in the workplace, with most women earning just three-quarters of what their male counterparts make. In reality, that’s only half of the story. For the last 20 years, more women have opted to start their own businesses than ever before, even outpacing men, and they have been thriving. The reality is that women can, and should, have a large presence in the business world.

Women in Business Today

According to a 2015 study by Babson College, businesses that have at least one woman in an executive seat tend to have much higher valuations than companies with all men in C-level positions. In fact, companies with a female executive are worth 64% more at first funding and 49 percent more at last funding than their all-male counterparts. With numbers like that, it’s no wonder that the amount of early-stage investing in companies with at least one female executive has been growing over the past 15 years, but there is still room to grow.

More recently, women have made progress in creating a solid foundation for more females to join the workforce. Research gathered by Zippia shows that as of December 2021, women make up 53.4% of the workers in the U.S. Of those individuals:

• 23% are in executive positions
• 29% are in senior management positions
• 37% are in manager positions
• 42% are in professional positions
• 47% are in support staff positions

These statistics alone are enough to get excited about the future for women in business, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Gender equality is a valid factor in business growth success, however, the 2020 Global Gender Gap Report shows that it’ll be more than 100 years before we finally close the gender gap and start paying women closer to their male counterparts.

Gender equality in the workplace involves more than equal pay. It also ensures access to the same treatment, opportunities, access to resources and ability to grow into leadership positions…[MORE]

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To read the entire article on the Collat School of Business at the University of Alabama at Birmingham website, visit: How women in business are shaping the future