From our friends at Inner City Advisors
This month Fast Company is highlighting women working to “changes the lives of girls and women everywhere, with their cover story, The League of Extraordinary Women. The article echoes what ICA has known for some time: Investing in women is not just a gender equality issue, it is an economic opportunity for our society.
In 2011, the Kauffman foundation released a research paper [PDF] looking at women entrepreneurs and showed “room for improvement in women’s entrepreneurship, with vastly more room as one goes up the scale into building growth companies.” Despite making up more than 50 percent of college graduates and almost 50 percent of the US labor force, women account for only 35 percent of the people involved in starting a business in the US and hold just 16% of corporate board seats.
Announcing the WEAmericas program in April, Secretary of State Clinton put it best: ”The most effective way to accelerate a nation’s economic productivity and prosperity is to enable women to participate.”
In related content – the podcast The Broad Experience features female entrepreneurship and explores whether the trend is hype or here to stay.