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[[Women in Entrepreneurship Lit Review]]

Over the past century, the United States has witnessed two large-scale social trends involving [[Women in Entrepreneurship|women in entrepreneurship]] that have had a significant impact on the country's economic growth. First, huge numbers of women have made their way into the official labor force. Around this time 50 years ago (February 1966), women's labor force participation rate was 39.6%, but in February 2016, 56.8% of women participated in the labor force [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300002]. This demonstrates substantial growth in women's entry to the labor force. Second, women are achieving a higher degree of education than in years past. As labor market barriers to women have been lowered, the benefits of a college education have grown more for women than men, and females now outpace males in college enrollment. [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-college-enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind/] This has provided women with similar access to the same jobs as men.

This issue brief aims to examine the role of women in entrepreneurship today by examining their jobs (or lack thereof) in entrepreneurship related fields, and examine the effectiveness of current policy related to women in entrepreneurship.

We examined all leaders in companies from 1980-2016 who have the titles of either chariman, CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, CTO, board member, President, Vice President, Founder, and Director. Of company members with those titles, only 29.8% were women. Of those women leaders, 22% were CEOs, 14% chairwomen, 27% CFOs, 26% COOs, 31% CIOs, 12% CTOs, 25% board members, 20% presidents, 34% vice presidents, 23% founders, and 39% directors. (from tables, PercentWomenXCompany, where X is job title)

These data show that of the women listed as "Company Executives", only a very small percentage have positions of power. However, this number has grown since 1980, which demonstrates a slow but positive growth of women in executive positions in general.

Overall, women-owned businesses account for slightly less than 1/3 of all businesses in the United States. At first glance the statistics portray a positive picture for the field's growth: the number of women-owned firms has grown 68 percent since 2007, compared to only 47 percent for all businesses. [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/women-are-owning-more-and-more-small-businesses/390642/]. However, these women owned businesses are typically only run by the woman herself; among employer firms, women-owned businesses account for only 16% of the total, and their shares of revenue and employees are in the single digits. [http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20reports%20and%20covers/2014/11/sources_of_economic_hope_womens_entrepreneurship.pdf]

Though at first glance women-owned business growth seems striking, the numbers are deceptive in that their shares of revenue and employees are in single digits. Furthermore, women who do go into entrepreneurship face societal disapproval of their actions, with a plurality of Americans believing not only that the country is not prepared to hire women to executive positions, but also that women are incapable of holding these positions due to their family responsibilities. Further, women get start-up capital for their companies 2-3 times as often from women-led VC funds, but only 6% of decision makers at VC funds are women. It's no wonder women are vastly underrepresented in this field.

Almost half-of female founders (48 percent) cite a lack of available mentors or advisers as holding them back. A third say lack of capital is a constraint. [http://www.inc.com/lisa-calhoun/30-surprising-facts-about-female-founders.html]

The Obama administration recognized the importance of expanding the role that women-owned businesses play in the national economy. Some of his initiatives include increasing access to capital, incentivizing small business growth and hiring, encouraging women owned business competition for government contracts, and enhancing long term survival of women owned businesses. Two primary pieces of legislation have bolstered the limited growth that the United States has seen in the field of women entrepreneurs, The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 and the Women’s Equity in Contracting Act. Both of these seek to help businesses headed up by women win more government contracts.

Jessica Milli, senior research associate at the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, said things like the Jobs Act and SBA's programs for women "really aim to put women-owned businesses...at a competitive advantage. (They) restrict competition, which has really helped to boost revenues and help more businesses get into the industry.” But such policies can’t, and haven't, solved all the challenges inherent to being a female entrepreneur. Even with targeted legislation, women business owners still face a significant wage gap and continually have smaller amounts of start-up capital than their male peers.

As women's prevalence in the United States workforce has increased, the United States has experienced an economic boom. However, women's numbers are still small in entrepreneurial fields, and even more microscopic in leadership positions in those fields. Current policy fails because it doesn't properly address women's lack of access to capital and mentorship. Moving forward, the United States must seek strategies to incentivize more women to enter the entrepreneurial workforce.

*SQL info can also be found on researcher@128.42.44.181 in the Women folder. Called "women.sql".

DROP TABLE manwomanfund;

CREATE TABLE manwomanfund AS

--129536

DROP TABLE manwomanfund2;

--%, state, city, round no

DROP TABLE fundWomenCEOs;

FROM manwomancompany2 GROUP BY companycity;

DROP TABLE titles01;

DROP TABLE title02;

DROP TABLE ManWomanCompany3;

LEFT JOIN titles01 ON manwomancompany2.jobtitle=titles01.title;

DROP TABLE PercentWomenCompany;

CREATE TABLE PercentWomenCompany AS

Year CEOs Founders Start-ups Partners FundExecs

*Data on likelihood of follow-on round

#this data still discounts a (small) percentage of data (doctors who didn't have a common name)

#have data organized, now we need to figure out how to extract it in meaningful terms for the report.