Women starting businesses face hurdles despite gains
 Friday, August 25, 2000
By MARCIA BLOMBERG Staff writer
Victoria White, president of a small Internet company in Northampton, remembers how she got her start in a technical field.
After recognizing that her dream of majoring in art would lead her down a rocky financial path, she decided to get a chemistry degree.
She enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In 1984 -- long after the second wave of feminism had surged -- White said she was "told by my adviser at UMass that I wouldn't make it because I'm female." As it turns out, "that was like waving a red flag in front of me," White recalled.
White did make it, with a degree in chemistry. She learned about computers, and started eclecTechs, a growing Internet company in Northampton, in 1995.
With a dozen employees and growth of at least 35 percent each year since 1995, White is doing well in a male-dominated field.
In a century that began with prohibitions against women in many workplaces and from the voting booth, women are now outpacing men in starting new businesses. But there are signs in this new millennium that White's success as a woman in a technical field may become more and more the exception than the rule.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the gap between male and female computer scientists has grown wider from 1983 to 1999.
And the Institute for Women and Technology reports that the number of women pursuing degrees in computer science and engineering has dropped by 12 percent over the last 10 years.
That's at a time when the U.S. Department of Labor predicts the number of computer engineers will more than double by 2008, to 622,000.
Still, women have made tremendous gains in business and the workforce since 1920.
In 1920, the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor estimates there were about 9 million women in the labor force, compared to about 33 million men. By 1999, the gap had narrowed -- there were about 65 million women and 75 million men.
While the pay gap between women and men persists, it's narrowing, particularly for young, college-educated women.
The Women's Bureau reports that in 1998, the average annual pay for women was 73.2 percent of the average annual pay for men.
That's an average; the news is better for young women no more than five years out of college, for whom the average is 91 percent of men's pay, according to Angela M. Rizzolo, equal opportunity specialist in the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor.
While the glass ceiling is still preventing women from rising into the very top jobs at most corporations, or even onto corporate boards of directors, the National Federation for Women Business Owners has found improvements in the most important thing for any business owner: access to capital.
A study just released by the federation and Wells Fargo & Co. found that women-owned firms are tapping into the equity markets, including venture capital and private investment.
Two-thirds of the women who have equity capital in their companies received their first equity investment within the last four years, the study found.
Still, gaps persist: The study found that women-owned firms are now getting about 9 percent of all institutional investment deals, but receive only 2.3 percent of the investment dollars.
As for conventional lenders, attitudes are changing. Another study by the federation found that in 1996, 50 percent of female business owners said they experienced no mistreatment at their bank in the previous year, compared to 35 percent in 1992.
Before starting eclecTechs, White was employed for several years in the 1980s in the UMass polymer science department, where she worked with the department's computers and Internet access in the laboratory. She was also the only woman in a technical position in the department, and she supervised post-doctoral students, the overwhelming majority of whom were male.
In 1994, she got her master of business administration at UMass because, "I was really getting weary of what I was doing in polymer science -- I was teaching the people who had everything, the white guys with Ph.Ds," she said.
She had no plans to start her own business, but a special MBA project she did on computer ethics drew attention. White recalled that she had developed what was, at that time, a new theory: that without expanded access to the Internet for every one at every level of society, we'd end up with a stratified culture of computer haves and computer have-nots.
She spent some time at the Brookings Institution discussing her thesis, and "while I was there, I felt I should do something about this," White said.
That's when she got the idea of starting a company "teaching people these things, particularly women and minorities."
"It seemed so crystal-clear to me the Internet was going to go places and change society, and it was important to get everyone to it," she said.
White started her business in February 1995, doing primarily Web site development work. A few months later, she started offering classes. The first one was an introduction to the Internet for businesses. Now her company offers 22 classes.
Web development and classes have remained an important part of the company's business, but about 18 months ago, White bought an Internet service provider in Greenfield to offer her clients all aspects of Web services.
White donates some of her company's services to organizations like a battered women's shelter, an animal shelter and the United Way.
She said she hasn't encountered overt skepticism from male business owners about her ability to lead a company in a technical field. But often when she walks into a room to start teaching a class, "guys will go up on the jargon, and I'll just go straight to the top" and out-jargon them.
White said many of her customers have also said they feel more comfortable with a woman business owner, confident that they won't be overcharged for services.
Rizzolo said the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote 80 years ago "certainly gave us a sense of value and purpose, and it gave us a right of choice," whether it's choosing a career or a leader.
Young women may not understand exactly what that means. Rizzolo recalls talking to high-school women earlier this year. Those teen-agers did not believe her when she told them that women couldn't have credit cards in their own names until the 1970s.
While those women are of a "generation that never has had to fight for anything," Rizzolo says, they may also have a sense of entitlement that will help them succeed.
"Because they've never experienced any disparity, or where the next paycheck's going to come from, I tend to think this generation will be less fearful in attaining goals," Rizzolo said.
Karen Blinderman, president of the Women's Business Owners Alliance in the Pioneer Valley and owner of KayBee Marketing Resources, said the alliance has grown from about six women in 1981 to about 105 women-owned businesses in the Pioneer Valley.
Blinderman, 52, notes that her 26-year-old, college-educated daughter "started almost at upper middle management. I see more opportunities for women like her, who are more persevering and will challenge the old-boy network."
Blinderman, who's been working since she was 14 years old, has hope for the future, tempered by skepticism.
"It's taken us 80 years to get this far," she said. "I hate to think it'll take us another 80 years to equal this progress, but it probably will. I see progress, but I don't think I'll see equality, not in my lifetime."
© 2000 UNION-NEWS. Used with permission.
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