Where The Jobs Are: Women Leaders Can Choose Best Cities, Industries
“Women are making significant strides as business leaders and entrepreneurs, yet many continue to face common challenges related to managing and securing financing, as well as adopting technology,” said Keri Gohman, head of Small Business Banking at Capital One.
In order to succeed as a woman leader, it matters where you are and what you do and– unfortunately– apparently also what you weigh as a female in the workplace.
The good news is the gender pay gap is not universal across all industries, as there are a few sectors where women earn more than men, according to Business Insider.
Those are for women working as accountants, police officers, office clerks, data entry clerks and as wholesale and retail buyers.
And thanks to some keen corporate leaders, definitive attempts to level the paying field has paid off. At Salesforce, chairman and CEO Marc Benioff says he spent $3 million at his company to pay men and women the same rates. He tells Fortune that closing the gender pay gap is as easy as pushing a button.
“With just the push of one button, every CEO in the world can know exactly what is their pay discrepancy between men and women, and I hope that every CEO pushes that button,” he said.
At PayPal, a new initiative to have more women leaders at the company is not only right, but also good business. Karthik Suri, vice president of business ops and planning at PayPal, writes: “Inclusion is critical for business. As a customer-champion company, we pay close attention to the wants and needs of our customers – they’re at the core of what we do each day.
“Women account for 85 percent of consumer purchases, the majority of online purchases and women-led small and medium businesses are growing at close to 50 percent year over year. The more monolithic we are, we lower our chances are of creating products and services that really resonate with our customers. As Warren Buffet said, “Why would we tap into only 50 percent of the brain and leadership power?” In my five years at PayPal, I have had almost an equal number of male and female managers and have learned immensely (and diversely) from each.”
Women in sales also add more to the leadership teams and bring in more revenue, according to Hubspot. Women hit their sales quota 70 percent of the time, compared to men who hit their targets 67 percent of the time. Women also stay longer in their positions, a year or more longer than men.
Where a woman entrepreneur works or decides to open a business is also relevant to her success.
In a new report from the Center for an Urban Future with support from Capital One, the number of women-owned businesses in the 25 largest American cities increased by 43 percent over the past five years.
Triple digit rate of growth are all in Southern cities, with Memphis, having a growth rate for women-owned businesses of 116 percent. Fort Worth came in second with a growth of 78 percent followed by Atlanta at 65 percent growth rate for women-owned businesses. Houston had 62 percent growth for women entrepreneurs and their businesses, with Dallas at 58 percent. Dallas had the highest revenues for a woman owned business at an average of $198,599.
“Women are making significant strides as business leaders and entrepreneurs, yet many continue to face common challenges related to managing and securing financing, as well as adopting technology,” said Keri Gohman, head of Small Business Banking at Capital One.
New York has the most women owned businesses in the U.S. with 414,000 women entrepreneurs generating a total of $53 billion in revenue, an increase of 35 percent since 2007. Coming in second for the number of businesses owned by women is Los Angeles, with 198,599. Chicago is not the Second City in this list, but the Third City, with 123,632 women entrepreneurs running companies.
Location is critical, but apparently for women in business, so is weight.
According to Fortune, “A new study published in the British Medical Journal looked at around 119,000 participants from the U.K. Biobank, and found strong evidence among its database that discrimination exists against shorter men and overweight women simply based on genetics.”
The study shows that, “For every additional 14 pounds of weight that a woman carries when compared to someone with the exact same height, she stands to earn around $2,133 less.”
For men, if he is 5’6 inches tall or shorter, he will earn $2,130 per year less.
About the Author
Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take The Lead, an award-winning author, journalist, emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University and a senior leader with The OpEd Project. @micheleweldon www.micheleweldon.com