Mothers Know Best, Even in Business!
Over the decades, women have steadily taken on newer and more progressive roles, and these include positions of power and responsibility.
In politics, for example, who doesn't know Sen. Hillary Clinton, a Democratic Party candidate who has a shot at becoming the first woman President in the country, or Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman speaker in U.S. House of Representative? Then there's Linda Buck and Toni Morrison, Women Nobel Laureates for Medicine and for Literature, respectively.
To date, the U.S. Labor Statistics show that women now comprise 46 percent of the labor force. By 2016, women are projected to account for almost half or 49 percent of the U.S. workforce.
You don't have to spend time verifying these statistics to prove that women are playing a bigger role in the workforce—just turn on your television, read the newspapers, or simply look around you.
And even as the number of women in the workforce is increasing, these working women are also taking new directions in their careers. More and more women are putting up their own businesses so they could devote more time to an essential role in life: as mothers and caretakers of the family.
The U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey shows that 29 percent of working women are self-employed or have their own business, in 2006. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics' Monthly Labor Review, married women would rather put up a business than enter the demanding corporate world so they could give more time to their family's needs.
Take Amy Langer, for example. Her company Salo, a successful finance and accounting staffing company, earned $32.1 million in sales after only two years of operation in 2006. In the succeeding year, the company earned over $40 million from top-notch clients she was able to draw together. She also faced the common challenge of working moms—balancing career and life at home—but she knew her priorities. She opted to attend to her family first and learned how to manage her time.
As she received an award from the Women Presidents' Organization and Entrepreneur Magazine as the No.1 fastest-growing entrepreneur in the U.S. and Canada in 2007, she emphasized that family comes first. "If I'm required to be in the office 80 hours a week or else the business can't run, then the business isn't sustainable," Langer said.
As Mother's Day draws near, let's pay a tribute to career women, especially to working moms and moms in business.
