Women snubbing corporate sector for small business ventures
15/06/2011
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Australian women are starting small businesses at twice the rate of men, indicating a potential failing of the corporate sector to attract and retain the female workforce.Research by BankWest, using Bureau of Statistics data, revealed growth in the rate of women starting up businesses in 2010 was 4.8%, almost double the growth rate for men at 2.6%. Over the past five years, the growth rate for women was 7%, triple that of men’s at 1.9%.
''One of the real trends that came out of the report was stronger growth in the number of women running their own business compared to men, particularly the growth in women running a small business by themselves, often part-time at first while raising children,'' said the report's author, Tim Crawford, a senior analyst at BankWest.
Rosemary Howard, executive director and Conjoint Professor of AGSM Executive Programs, told Human Capital that corporate cultures are still not flexible enough for women with children, which is driving them to becoming their own boss.
“[Corporate cultures] need to be able to create ways in which more senior women can do what they have to at home but still progress their careers in those larger organisations,” she said.
“There aren’t opportunities for flexibility of hours or time when they’re having children. So their parenting starts to feel compromised, and they say ‘no, I’ve got to get that part right’, and they don’t feel they can stay in those large organisations – that’s when they leave and perhaps start their own businesses.”
Howard said that when women leave for personal business ventures, it results in the organisation becoming even slower to adapt change.
“Large organisations are not going to adapt to how the world is for women, for ethnicity, for age, and they’re not going to be optimally creative and innovative because they’ll tend to not have the best robust discussions about what best practice is.”
Wendy Montague, director of leadership and talent at Hay Group, told Human Capital recently that change needs to be led from the top and supported in a holistic manner throughout the organisation.