VITAL STATISTICS

Demographic trends favor women

SV: What are the overall trends for women business owners and leaders on the Seacoast?

Francese: Overall trends are very positive for women in the Seacoast. Right now women are almost half of the entire labor force, at about 47 percent, but they are a slightly over half of professional workers at 51 percent. They are also about half of the lawyers and nearly two out of three physicians and surgeons here on the Seacoast.

The reason for those numbers is that more women are going to college and getting advanced degrees than men. In our knowledge-based economy, people with the skills obtained from going to college or graduate school are going to do better in the work force, make more money, and stay employed longer than people who don't go to college. Of all the people enrolled in higher education today, 58 percent are women and they are getting about that same percentage of the degrees awarded.

The forecast that I've seen from the National Center for Education Statistics would suggest that this gap is likely to be bigger in the future. But it may peak out at about 60 percent. The majority of professional and managerial workers in the future will be women. Already, today, 55 percent of financial services workers and two-thirds of accountants and auditors are women.

So when you can manage money and have the kind of skills needed to be successful in our information economy you are likely to be better equipped to run a business. As a result, the number of women-owned businesses, which has been rising, will surely continue to increase.

SV: Are there any demographic trends that will have a greater impact on businesses owned or run by women?

FRANCESE:Yes, and the reason can be seen in the two high-growth industries: health care and professional services. They are not only high growth but also have lots of highly paid workers and are open equally to men and women. One would presume as well that the demographic trend favors women because those occupations where women are at a disadvantage, such as heavy manufacturing, are declining. In an office-based environment or health care environment women have an equal chance to succeed. And since more women are receiving higher education they have an advantage there.

SV: Is there still a glass ceiling in terms of compensation and career advancement?

Francese: Perhaps, but only in bigger corporations that may have historically been managed by men. But the vast majority of workers in the U.S. work for small firms with fewer than 25 employees. In those small firms there is no such thing as a glass ceiling. It's whoever gets the job done. The glass ceiling is becoming less and less relevant because most job growth is in the smallest firms.

It may not be apparent, but people who are self employed are growing at three times the rate that the general labor force is growing. We now have a larger number of men and women who have the skills to work for themselves. Another favorable trend for such micro-enterprises is that many larger firms are finding it advantageous to outsource specialized functions for which they may not need someone on the payroll all the time. It's to their advantage to hire an independent contractor to provide special services or other functions that may have been done by employees in the past.

SV: Is there any data that suggests women who own businesses run them in ways that are different than men?

Francese: None that I know of. There have been some articles written that suggest women by nature are more relationship oriented and tend to run businesses based on personal relationships and want things to be less confrontational. But that's just various people's opinions. Women have shown they can run a business just as successfully as men. Whether the way they do it is different in some way is a subjective judgment I'll leave to psychologists. From a demographic point of view it makes no difference.

SV: Women do not enjoy the same status as men in many important world markets. Is this a major obstacle?

Francese: I don't think it's a major obstacle. If a woman were a senior executive of a big multi-national Fortune 500 firm, such as McDonald's, Disney or Hewlett-Packard, is that woman at a disadvantage in world markets? Representing such a large organization, I don't think so. But let's be frank, women have faced many obstacles in domestic and global markets men have not faced and they are likely to find them in the future. But, with perseverance and skill, millions of women have also overcome those obstacles.