A recent online survey conducted by the National Association of the Self-Employed revealed that 86 percent of the women business owners questioned plan to vote today.
As leaders of the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship and the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics, both at Chatham University’s Women’s Institute, we are not surprised by this statistic. Women in business are keenly interested in government because it impacts both their personal and professional lives.
While the survey is focused on businesswomen, an overall gender gap in voter turnout has characterized every presidential election since 1980. In 2012, 63.7 percent of eligible women in the country voted, compared to 59.8 percent of eligible men, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Candidates know that women have the power to decide elections.
While women are strong performers in the voting booth, they do not run our governments at an equal rate to men. Those who lead us are overwhelmingly white and male. In Pennsylvania’s Legislature and the U.S. Congress, 82 percent of elected leaders are male. Pennsylvania has never elected a woman governor or U.S. senator.
The Women Donors Network found that, of 42,000 elected positions across the nation, ranging from local counties up through Congress, only 29 percent are held by women, even though women make up 51 percent of the population. So, while women have power at the ballot box, it is not translating into power in representation.
This paucity of representation matters. Studies have shown that the presence of women in legislatures makes a difference. Women are more likely to work in a bipartisan manner, more likely to bring new issues to the policy agenda, more likely to use cooperative language in deliberation and more likely to increase government transparency. These effects are believed to result in policy outcomes more inclusive of the entire population.
Meanwhile, the number of women-owned businesses has increased nationally by 68 percent since 1997, a rate one and a half times the national average. The growth of these firms also is higher than that of all other privately held businesses during this time period. Census data nevertheless indicate that, while women-owned businesses represent about 50 percent of privately held companies in the United States, most of them (75 percent) reach only up to $50,000 in annual gross revenues. Only 2.6 percent reported more than $1 million in annual revenues, compared to 6 percent of men-owned firms.
Likewise, according to a four-year study by the nonprofit research organization Catalyst, companies that have women among their senior executives and directors perform better in the marketplace. On average, they have higher sales and returns on investment. However, in Fortune 500 companies women account for just 17 percent of board members and 15 percent of senior executives.
This is a problem because we know that when more women are at the political table and in the corporate boardroom we all do better.
The solution? Women need to continue to embrace leadership, run for office, start and grow their own companies, aspire to the senior-executive suites and take more risks. More organizations and institutions need to provide training and support for women to reach these top spots. Male colleagues need to help open doors by sponsoring women in the workforce and supporting women candidates.
We are here to help. If you would like to get more politically involved, the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics invites you to participate in a Ready to Run Campaign Training program Jan. 31. The Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship has ongoing entrepreneurial training and mentoring programs for women looking to start and grow businesses.
Working together we can all do better.
Dana Brown is executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics. Rebecca U. Harris is director of the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship.
First Published: November 4, 2014, 5:00 a.m.
