Oct 17, 2016 | Corporate, Economic Security, Entrepreneurs, Occupational Segregation, State Initiatives, Talent Management, Vermont, Wage Gap, Work, Workplace Diversity
This is the third in a series of briefs published by Change The Story on topics related to women’s economic status. This report focuses specifically on business ownership by women and its potential to bolster and invigorate Vermont’s economy. Like the majority of national and regional reports on businesses, this report relies heavily on data from the 2012 U.S. Census Survey of Business Owners. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are specific to Vermont. To date, we have had to rely on national reports to define the health of Vermont’s women-owned businesses. But their conclusions paint conflicting pictures: one analysis of 2014 data ranked Vermont first among states for entrepreneurs, while another ranked Vermont 50th. The difference between these rankings begs the question: What is the real story for Vermont women and business ownership?
Download the full report.
Download the companion slide deck.
Among the findings:
- Women-owned businesses are vital to Vermont’s economy.
- Women own 23,417 businesses in Vermont, which employ 36,326 people, and generate annual revenues of approximately $2.2 billion.
- Although growing at a faster rate than businesses owned by men, women-owned firms in Vermont are fewer in number, smaller in size, and lower in annual revenues.
- Between 2007-2011, the number of female-owned businesses grew 15%; during the same period male-owned businesses grew by only 6%.
- Women-owned businesses generate 9% of gross revenues and employ 12% of workers in privately-held Vermont firms.
- Women business owners are significantly underrepresented in 9 of the 10 highest grossing sectors. This limits financial opportunities for individual women and their potential contributions to Vermont’s economy.
- Women-owned businesses have the potential to play a much bigger role in Vermont’s economic development.
- If the percent of women-owned businesses that are employers matched that of male-owned businesses, and those firms had the same average receipts, it would add $3.8 billion to Vermont’s economy.
- If Vermont women chose business ownership at the same rate as men, it would result in more than 10,500 new businesses.
- If just 1 in 4 of the existing 20,786 women-owned businesses without employees hired just one worker, it would result in an additional 5,200 new jobs.
- Maximizing the potential of women-owned businesses – and indeed all of VT businesses – requires new and better data.
- While existing business-related data sources can provide reliable top-line statistics, they are less useful in revealing nuanced information about the motivations, challenges or opportunities experienced by Vermont business owners. Focusing on the finer points of what makes a business successful is critical to Vermont’s economic future.
Oct 12, 2016 | CTS in the news, Data, Economic Security, Occupational Segregation, Vermont, Work
You’re Invited on October 19th!
What: An event and keynote address that tackles the question: what is the real story for Vermont women and business ownership?
Change The Story VT (CTS) will reveal findings from its third report on the status of women-owned businesses in Vermont.
Policy makers, business association members, economic development professionals and interested members of the public are invited to attend this address by CTS Director Tiffany Bluemle, with Pat Heffernan and Laura Lind-Blum of Research Partners, and Vermont Commission on Women’s Cary Brown.
No RSVP is required for the report keynote.
Who: Change The Story VT and the Vermont Commission on Women
When: Wednesday, October 19, 2016 from 11:15am – 12:15pm (this is part of a larger event – the Women Business Owner Network Fall Conference) – There’s still time to register for the full conference.
Where: Vermont State House – House Chamber
Why: As women in the U.S. and in Vermont are starting businesses in increasing numbers, any analysis of women’s economic well-being must consider the status of self-employed entrepreneurs. The report focuses specifically on business ownership by women, its impact on women’s income, and its potential to bolster and invigorate Vermont’s economy.
A few findings from the report:
- Thirty-two (32%) of Vermont businesses are women-owned and add billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to the state’s workforce and economy. In fact, between 2007-2012, women own 23,417 businesses in VT, employ 36,326 people, and generate annual revenues of $2.2 billion.
- When comparing the average annual revenues of male and female-owned firms in Vermont, women make 19 cents on every dollar of revenue that VT male-owned businesses make.
- Women are significantly underrepresented in 9 of the 10 highest grossing sectors. This limits financial opportunities for individual women and their potential contributions to the Vermont’s economy.
The full report will be released on October 19th. Be sure to join our mailing list to get your copy!
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”http://changethestoryvt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/WOB-Report-Press-Release-Oct-12-2016.pdf” title=”Download the full press release.” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Download the full press release.[/x_button]
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”http://changethestoryvt.org/2016-status-report-womens-business-ownership-and-the-vt-economy/” title=”The full report is now available.” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]The full report is now available.[/x_button]
Aug 1, 2016 | Data, Occupational Segregation, Wage Gap, Work, Workplace Diversity
Source: Economic Policy Institute
How discrimination, societal norms, and other forces affect women’s occupational choices—and their pay
Summary
What this report finds: Women are paid 79 cents for every dollar paid to men—despite the fact that over the last several decades millions more women have joined the workforce and made huge gains in their educational attainment. Too often it is assumed that this pay gap is not evidence of discrimination, but is instead a statistical artifact of failing to adjust for factors that could drive earnings differences between men and women. However, these factors—particularly occupational differences between women and men—are themselves often affected by gender bias. For example, by the time a woman earns her first dollar, her occupational choice is the culmination of years of education, guidance by mentors, expectations set by those who raised her, hiring practices of firms, and widespread norms and expectations about work–family balance held by employers, co-workers, and society. In other words, even though women disproportionately enter lower-paid, female-dominated occupations, this decision is shaped by discrimination, societal norms, and other forces beyond women’s control.
Why it matters, and how to fix it: The gender wage gap is real—and hurts women across the board by suppressing their earnings and making it harder to balance work and family. Serious attempts to understand the gender wage gap should not include shifting the blame to women for not earning more. Rather, these attempts should examine where our economy provides unequal opportunities for women at every point of their education, training, and career choices.
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”http://www.epi.org/publication/womens-work-and-the-gender-pay-gap-how-discrimination-societal-norms-and-other-forces-affect-womens-occupational-choices-and-their-pay/” title=”Economic Policy Institute: “Women’s work” and the gender pay gap” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full report[/x_button]
Jun 30, 2016 | Data, Occupational Segregation, Work
This report addresses women’s access to well-paid, growing, middle-skill jobs (jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree). It documents sex segregation in middle-skill jobs, and discusses how gender integration of good jobs could both reduce skill-shortages and improve women’s economic security. The report focuses on middle-skilled “target” occupations in manufacturing, information technology, and transportation, distribution, and logistics that have high projected job openings and that typically employ few women. Using an innovative methodology based on the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*Net database, Marc Bendick, Ph.D., of Bendick and Egan Economic Consultants, Inc, joined IWPR researchers Ariane Hegewisch, Barbara Gault, Ph.D., and Heidi Hartmann, Ph.D. to identify lower paid predominantly female occupations that share many of the characteristics of the “target” occupations and can serve as “on-ramp” occupations to good middle-skill jobs for women seeking to improve their earnings, and employers looking to fill the vacancies. The report is part of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research’s Pathways to Equity: Women and Good Jobs initiative, funded by a grant from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation as part of its of its $250 million, five-year New Skills at Work initiative.
More information and a full list of growing well-paid middle-skill occupations with potential “on-ramp” occupations for women can be found here.
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”http://womenandgoodjobs.org/about-the-report/” title=”Pathways to Equity: Narrowing the Wage Gap by Improving Women’s Access to Good Middle-Skill Jobs” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the report[/x_button]
Jun 7, 2016 | Education, Occupational Segregation, Wage Gap, Work
Source: Institute for Women’s Policy Research
“Women and men enter job training programs with similar goals in mind—they want to expand their skill set, increase their earnings, and support their families. However, there is a gender divide in the occupational areas for which women and men receive training, which contributes to to inequalities in men and women’s earnings. Women are more likely to receive training in managerial, technical, and professional occupations, as well as in service and sales and clerical occupations (Figure 1). Men, however, are much more likely than women to receive training in male-dominated occupations like construction and transportation, which tend to have higher earnings than female-dominated jobs. This gender segregation in training programs closely resembles patterns in the labor market as a whole, where women are 72.2percent of office and administrative support workers, while men are 96.5 percent of installation, maintenance, and repair workers, and more than 97 percent of all construction and extraction workers.”
“Gender segregation in job training programs has important implications for women’s long-term economic security. Data for adults who finished training programs funded by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) between April 2013 and March 2014 show that while women were the majority of those who received intensive and training services (51 percent, Table II-10) and were, on average, in programs of longer duration than men (Table II-18), their average earnings after receiving WIA services were lower than men’s. In the fourth quarter after finishing adult programs, women who exited programs between July 2012 and June 2013 earned $5,296 compared with $7,188 for men (Table II-31). (Published data do not provide information on earnings prior to receiving WIA services and include all exiters, not just those with full-time earnings.)”
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”https://femchat-iwpr.org/2016/05/24/segregation-in-federally-funded-job-training-programs-contributes-to-the-gender-wage-gap/” title=”Segregation in Federally-Funded Job Training Programs Contributes to the Gender Wage Gap” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full article[/x_button]
Apr 11, 2016 | Corporate, Economic Security, Occupational Segregation, State Initiatives, Talent Management, Vermont, Wage Gap, Work, Workplace Diversity
This is the second in a series of briefs published by Change The Story on topics related to women’s economic status. This report focuses specifically on occupational segregation, its impact on women’s wages, and the way in which it compromises Vermont’s ability to make the most of home-grown talent. Much of the data in this report is new or not regularly collected or published. All of it is specific to Vermont and all is critical – not just in terms of what it reflects about women, but in its implications for the entire Vermont economy.
Download the full report.
Download the companion slide deck.
Among our findings:
- Women who work full-time struggle to make ends meet.
- Of the 15 occupations in which women’s median annual salaries top $35,000, nearly half are in male-dominated fields.
- Occupational segregation, the uneven distribution of labor across and within sectors by gender, is the norm – not the exception – in Vermont.
- In 15 of 25 major occupational categories tracked by the U.S. Census, either men or women are 70% or more of all workers.
- Forty years after Title IX, women’s work continues to be women’s work.
- The gender balance in most traditionally female occupations has remained nearly constant from 1970-2013. Nearly half of women working full-time in Vermont continue to be employed in the same occupations in which they worked forty years ago.
- The next generation of female electricians, coders, and engineers isn’t in the pipeline.
- Young women are a small fraction of students who completed computer science, engineering, trades and technical programs at state career and technical high schools: 9% of those in information technology; 6% in manufacturing; 6% in transportation; and 5% in architecture and construction.
- While the gender breakdown is essentially equal among high school students taking Advanced Placement (AP) tests in calculus, chemistry, and biology, young women are a minority of students earning college degrees in physics, chemistry, computer science, economics, and engineering.
- Occupational segregation is costly – not just for women, but for employers and the Vermont economy.
- Nearly 60% of high-wage, high-demand entry-level occupations are those in which women are a significant minority of workers. Occupational segregation limits the pool of potential workers for jobs employers need to fill.
