Ep 134: 15 Data-Backed Reasons Only 2% of Women-Owned Businesses Reach $1 Million in Revenue — And How to Break Through
Episode Summary
Why do only 2% of women-owned businesses reach $1 million in revenue—and what can we do to change it?
If you’re surprised and disappointed about that statistic, you’re not alone. This episode disrupts the myth of “equal opportunity” and peels back the layers that limit women entrepreneurs—plus offers solutions to help you shatter them.
In this episode, you will:
Learn how societal biases and internalized stereotypes silently impact women’s business decisions and strategies—and how to overcome them.
Explore actionable insights to secure funding, rethink business opportunities, and build a high-growth business in industries where women are underrepresented.
Understand the profound connection between mindset, delegation, and a thriving business—and why stepping back strategically can propel you forward faster than ever.
Listen now to learn how to dismantle the obstacles keeping women entrepreneurs smaller than they could be.
Episode mentioned
Ep #34: The 'Too Braggy' Fear and What I'm Doing About It
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The Uncommon Way is led by business coach Jenna Harrison, who helps women entrepreneurs feel confident, find their ideal clients effortlessly and avoid overwork so they can manifest money and abundance in their business and life.
This podcast empowers female entrepreneurs to overcome imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and limiting beliefs through somatics, mindset, and spirituality, create 7-figure offers, and build an online service business with clarity and alignment.
Full Episode Transcript:
Jenna Harrison: [00:00:00] Get ready to discover the hidden barriers that hold women entrepreneurs back from experiencing the same success as their male counterparts and the powerful strategies you can use to shatter them.
You're listening to the Uncommon Way business and life coaching podcast, the podcast that helps women entrepreneurs get clear on signature offers and strategies. That's sell themselves so you can lean back and stop the hustle. You will learn to maximize your mindset, messaging, and strategy, and step into the uncommonly successful business and life you are creating.
Here's your host, top ranked business coach and reformed over analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.
Welcome back to the uncommon way. I'm so excited to share all of the research I've been diving into this week. I [00:01:00] started with one small question and then went way down the rabbit hole because I was enthralled, to the point that I delayed this episode's release in order to continue working on it night and day in full hyper focus mode because it was that compelling.
We all know that there's an income gap between men and women. For the same job, a woman is paid less. Many of us moved into entrepreneurship so that we could work for ourselves and earn what we wanted. But unfortunately, women tend to earn less in entrepreneurship, too. And as of 2017, the last census data from the United States, just under 2 percent of women owned businesses there had reached 1 million in revenue.
Today, we're diving into 15 reasons behind this phenomenon and how to get ahead of them or fully shatter them. This is a heavily researched episode, as I mentioned, and on our show notes page we're linking to the original [00:02:00] source material if you're curious to dive deeper into the topic. This is information that not just every woman business owner needs to know, but every woman needs to know.
It will completely change how you think about yourself, and you'll be motivated to get out there and change these kinds of statistics. In fact, I have no doubt that our next census data will reveal more favorable numbers, and the data after that will reveal even more favorable numbers. So let's get you into that growing percentage.
Here are just three of the takeaways you'll get from this episode. You will learn how societal biases and internalized stereotypes silently impact women's decisions and strategies and how to overcome them. We'll explore actionable insights to secure funding, rethink business opportunities, and build a high growth business in industries where women are underrepresented.
[00:03:00] You'll understand the profound connection between mindset, delegation, and a thriving business, and why stepping back strategically can propel you forward faster than ever. But first, how are you? I am doing so well. We had such a fun, busy weekend with different festivals and get togethers, and I find myself Thinking back to this very minute, like this month, last year, when we lived in that isolated town in Pennsylvania with so little to do in the winter, it is, I think, just such a testament to the power of designing your life to meet your desires rather than just staying with what's easy.
Because it has not been easy moving overseas. But it was so worth it. Kind of like entrepreneurship. Okay, let me own up to what inspired this episode. In my episode 131 which was called Break Out of the Fish Bowl Reinvent [00:04:00] Yourself This Way to Fast Track Business Growth as a Woman Entrepreneur I shared a statistic that I did not fact check.
And I apologize. Sometimes things come to mind as I'm talking and I'll share them to illustrate a point but usually I remember to say Okay, I don't remember the exact numbers, I think it might have been this, but don't quote me, but the point I want to make is, whatever the point is. But in that episode, I didn't give you that caveat, I just blurted out the statistic.
Which is so irresponsible because now more than ever, we need to understand facts, not regurgitated clickbait. So, going back and recording an addendum there, but I wanted to call it out here too. What I said was that just 2 percent of women owned businesses reach 7 figures. Well, 30 percent of mail loan businesses do.
That 30 percent figure is likely incorrect. I'll explain why later in this episode. But I set out to get to the bottom of [00:05:00] the exact number and quickly became completely engrossed in the topic. Now, it is true that as of 2017, which is our last census data in the United States, Only 2 percent of women owned businesses reached the 1 million mark.
And women owned businesses overall earned one fifth of what male owned businesses did. Even though we had nearly 70 percent as many businesses. I'll be linking to the U. S. Census Bureau report and the National Women's Business Council study that show this. Plus, the percentages are much lower if we look at women of color.
Every single thing that I'm about to share here is exacerbated for women of color, whether that's access to capital or societal expectations. So let's educate ourselves and create some change, shall we? In no particular order. Here are 15 reasons why less than 2 percent of women owned businesses cross 1 million in revenue.
Number [00:06:00] 1. Under representation in high growth STEM fields and stereotypes about STEM subjects. From a young age, girls are less likely to favor STEM topics, and later, less likely to pursue careers in STEM or other high growth sectors. And yet, the American Association of University Women report, titled Why So Few, shows that by 2007, girls started to outperform boys in math and science grades, and outpaced boys in the number of math and science college credits they received while in high school.
It's fascinating that girls do so well in math. Because I hear the women tell me that they aren't good with numbers and aren't good with the business side of things and kind of dread learning because it's just not interesting either. But even though they do well in class, when it comes to high stakes tests, girls and women underperform ever more so as they progress through school.
This according to an article in the Journal of [00:07:00] Personality and Social Psychology by Brian Nosak and Mazarin Banaji. Apologies if I'm mispronouncing those names. So, to understand why, we need to go back further, to the kind of thing that was revealed through a test where participants grouped different words together that had to do with math and art, and men and women, during the period since its inception in 1998 through More than a half million people from around the world took this test, and more than 70 percent of test takers more readily associated male with science and female with arts than the reverse.
Even when they did not consciously believe in the stereotype that girls and women aren't as good at math and science. But okay, back to the high stakes tests and the evidence that a majority of people carry an implicit bias that math is more of a male trait, which would of course seep into parenting and teaching and the [00:08:00] media.
A large body of research shows that stereotyped groups are negatively affected by stereotypes, especially when under pressure. In that they fear being viewed through the lens of the negative stereotype, or they fear conforming to the stereotype. It's called stereotype threat. It was first identified with black Americans in test taking, and then in 1999 the same type of study was done with women.
I'll link to that study by Spencer et al., where male and female first year university math students were divided into two groups. All of the subjects strongly identified with math, and they all had similar aptitude as demonstrated by their grades and test scores. One group was told that men tend to perform better, so that was the threat condition or the pressure.
The other group was told that both men and women tend to score the same, alleviating that pressure. Well, guess what? The women performed worse than the men in the threat group, and on par with the [00:09:00] men in the non threat group. And according to the Why So Few report that I mentioned earlier, in the following decade, more than 300 studies have supported that finding.
One of which showed that the threat can be induced just by having someone indicate their sex before taking the test. Another, in the journal Psychological Science, showed that women's test scores are negatively affected by having even one man in the room. And guess which test had the highest disparity in mass scores between men and women?
The SAT, one of the highest pressure tests we have in the United States. That's from the Nosek and Banaji article that I mentioned earlier. There's another ramification to stereotype threat. To avoid being judged by the negative stereotypes, girls may start to say and believe that they're not interested in those fields.
It's called disidentification. Oh, well, I'm just not a math [00:10:00] person. I like these other subjects more. Sound familiar? Ugh, it does to me. I feel like this explains why I and so many of my clients have had lifelong struggles with perceived feminine traits and have overcompensated to become so logic focused and hard charging in our earlier lives.
We don't want to be perceived through the negative stereotype of being emotional and weak and irrational. Instead, I believe we should be rewriting stereotypes, seeking balance, and delighting in the many diverse gifts that we bring to the table. Both the stereotypical masculine traits and the stereotypical feminine traits.
I also believe that doing so vastly improves business success. Before we move on A very natural question is, wait, but what if there's a biological difference driving the underrepresentation in STEM? For instance, men do consistently, and very [00:11:00] significantly, outscore women in spatial reasoning skills, especially mental rotation, which is the ability to mentally rotate objects in your head.
And these skills are considered especially important in high level STEM subjects and a predictor of success in those fields. I got that both from the Why So Few study and a 2019 meta review study in Psychological Bulletin. The same study showed that preschool boys and girls test equally for those skills.
And then in the first years of formal schooling, males take a slight advantage and then they continue to do so over time. I'm quoting here. Twice as many men as women are top performers in mental rotation, making it one of the largest gender differences in cognition. End quote. An author of the paper says that previous research has shown that parents use more spatial language when they talk to preschool sons than daughters.
And that girls report more [00:12:00] anxiety about having to perform spatial tasks than do boys by as early as first grade. And that children are aware of gender stereotypes about spatial intelligence during elementary school. I mean, this is totally anecdotal, but my son has gotten super excited about Legos and Minecraft.
After slightly older boys he admires have referenced or shown interest in them. So we can see how both perception and practice are influencing the skill development. But here's some good news. It turns out that the brain can be trained to improve in this area. When this training was given at Michigan Technology University, spatial skills test scores among women improved from an average of 52 to 82 percent in 10 weeks.
And 77 percent remain enrolled in the School of Engineering or they had already graduated from it, compared to only 48 percent of [00:13:00] women who initially failed the test and then did not take the training. So often women tell me they're not good with business stuff. They just want to, for instance, help people.
Or, they turn over parts of their businesses to consultants or they hire team members because it's just not their strong suit. Or they overwork or take on additional, frequently demanding clients because they just don't understand their true numbers and they feel so out of control. And these all feel real.
They're not making it up. They're not calculating the most appropriate gender conforming thing to say. It's their perception of their experience. Like, my client who was so worried she was hemorrhaging money, but then it turned out she had extremely high profit margins. Or it's like when I was little. If you asked a girl what she wanted to be when she grew up, it was a secretary or a teacher.
Those were the expected professions for women. Maybe a nurse. [00:14:00] And I remember thinking when I was five that what I really truly wanted was to be a secretary. Thank God I had a dad who immediately replied with, or you could be the president of the company. I'm also one of the girls who thought I was terrible at math, even though I was the only junior in my AP Calculus class.
If you could see me right now, I am shaking my head side to side. And rolling my eyes. This gets me so fired up. I'm so grateful for all the studies I've been quoting and others like them which are helping us step back and say wait, what if all of these ideas were given to me and are not necessarily true?
What would be possible for me if I believed that these were skills I could absolutely learn? That I'm really good at them, or these possibilities are absolutely open to me. And if I feel resistance, it's understandable, but I'll likely soon have a very different perspective. This is why so [00:15:00] many of the episodes in this podcast are about reinvention.
When we take off the blinders and move forward in a fresh way, we can accomplish things that our earlier selves couldn't ever have imagined. So let's develop our abilities in STEM subjects and encourage all the women we know to rethink their assumptions too. And let's help all the girls we know understand what they're up against and help them recognize how competent and capable they are with STEM subjects.
and develop their interest in them as much as we possibly can. Let's move on to point number two. An auxiliary problem to what we just discussed is that there are fewer women in the most high growth industries, bringing our averages down. Women owned businesses are often concentrated in industries like retail or services, which can have lower profit margins and scaling potential compared to tech or manufacturing.
These industries also tend to require less human [00:16:00] capital and formal qualifications, and thus become lower value sectors, according to a World Bank report. Luckily, services can have high profit margins. But many women owned businesses are in human care industries, which are not always the most profitable, and many don't know how to set themselves up for higher profits.
Back when I was in the States, the company that I had come to our house cleaning was woman owned, and I talked to the owner frequently. There were several problems going on with people calling out sick, of course, it was the time of COVID. And so very frequently she would have to cancel services and I perceived that she was undercharging for her services as well and I was having candid conversations with her about this because obviously my pet topic is empowering women and I knew in my heart of hearts that it was important to me to support a woman owned business, that it was important to me to have [00:17:00] stability that I always knew the house would be cleaned and I wouldn't have to deal with reschedules.
I wanted to support how she helped her employees, other women, and really went above and beyond for them. There were so many things that meant that I would love to pay her more. I would absolutely stick with her if she, and would have even signed on with her. As she had presented her company to me in this light and really made herself stand out.
Unfortunately, she didn't listen to the advice and ended up closing her business, which I found so tragic. In my opinion, after nearly a decade in the business coaching space, what creates a seven figure business are seven figure offers. Pure and simple. If you don't have a blue ocean offer that sets you apart from the competition and really calls in your best fit clients.
And you're trying to compete in a saturated market on price or loyalty alone? Your profits will remain low. [00:18:00] I've had several clients who branded themselves as having such fair and affordable rates. But after working together, we realized that their desire to do so was based in their own perceptions of what they thought people wanted or what they thought was the right thing to do.
And when we questioned that, and they subsequently created new offers and repositioned themselves, Their profits increased and their workloads decreased. Let's move on to number three, access to capital. Women receive less venture capital and bank financing compared to men, limiting their ability to scale businesses.
In fact, all women teams only received 1. 9 percent of total venture capital. According to a TechCrunch report, in a pattern called mirroring, people want to work with people who look like them and lend to people who look like them or look like very successful entrepreneurs. And in a Medium [00:19:00] article by Richard Kirby, where he posted his own data set listing every single person in venture capital in the United States.
In 2018, a whopping 82 percent of venture capital employees were men, and 70 percent of all employees were white, by the way, and 40%, 40 percent had attended either Stanford or Harvard, just two schools. And yet in the 2018 McKinsey report that was called Delivering Through Diversity, We see why it would make better business sense to lend to people who don't look like them.
I'm quoting, Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 15 percent more likely to experience above average profitability. And companies in the fourth quartile for companies in the top quartile, profitability was 30 percent higher. A mass challenge and BCG study of 350 startups that received funding showed that startups that were [00:20:00] founded or co founded by women returned 78 cents per dollar of funding it.
While male founded startups returned 33 cents. This is why I've said before, and I'll say it again, to me there is no better bet than a woman entrepreneur who is motivated and committed. I'd invest in myself over the stock market any day. And my clients too. I have to admit, when I was first taking notes for this episode, I questioned whether or not women were being persistent enough in seeking funding, and if they were showing up confidently enough with potential investors.
But after getting into the research, I can see that that is blaming the victim. So where do we go from here? We can, of course, choose to start businesses with low startup costs, which is what most of my clients do. And we can also educate ourselves and each other about funding opportunities that do exist.
I'm linking to iFundWomen, a funding platform specifically for women led [00:21:00] businesses. Invest Atlanta, which is an example of the many local funding opportunities available, and an article from LegalZoom listing the best grants for women in 2025, such as the Her Rise Micro grant, which gives a thousand dollars monthly loans.
Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.
Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to theuncommonway. com slash schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach. Let's move on to number four, limited networks. Women have less access to [00:22:00] influential business networks that could provide mentorship or partnerships and funding opportunities just because, traditionally, those were male spaces.
Our presence there is only slowly increasing. That's why, simultaneously, we need to create our own networks. When I added a group of mastermind component to the Clarity Accelerator, I saw a huge improvement in client results. But it's not just about learning from people who've gone before you, although that's what everybody seems to want, right?
I want to put myself in rooms with people who are far ahead of where I am currently. But, it's a huge benefit to you to help others, too. You really solidify your learning, and you naturally re examine your own situation with fresh eyes. I get so inspired talking to my clients, and they come up with amazing ideas that I wouldn't have considered and teach me things and connect me to different mentors and strategies.
If you think you can't learn from people who earn [00:23:00] less than you in business, or have a lower audience size or whatever metric seems most important to you at this particular moment, you are shooting yourself in the foot and are missing out on the opportunity to start reversing the trend of women's lack of access to networks.
What's important is that you get into community and you open your mind to all of the benefits there. You can join local or national meetups and organizations, you can join us in the Accelerator, you can even create your own group. We need more women joining networks, creating networks, and committing to networks.
As more women succeed, succeeding becomes easier for all of us. Alright, number five is starting smaller. I found limited data for this, but a Kauffman Foundation study analyzed 570 high tech firms in 2004 and revealed that women owned businesses were more likely to be sole proprietorships, often home based, and less likely to [00:24:00] have employees.
Now, 2004 was a long time ago, but it may suggest That women either anticipated smaller operations and it became a self fulfilling prophecy, or faced resource constraints that limited their scaling, or just felt bad or uncertain about seeking funding before they were actually making money. It's also possible that they were balancing caregiving responsibilities.
Those things might have restricted their initial growth potential, or long term growth potential, in that fast paced tech landscape. And even as women progress in business, the 2012 U. S. CENSA data showed that fewer than 20 percent of women owned firms had any employees aside from the entrepreneur herself, and women employ only 7.
5 percent of all employees. But obviously, you're restricting your company's growth if you don't allow yourself to be supported. So the invitation here is to consider what is [00:25:00] preventing me from dreaming bigger and going bigger. It's like when a client of mine shared in our group that she wanted to someday sell her company for X millions, and the rest of us were immediately like, No, in 10x that.
It's a challenge to see when you are playing small or when you're stuck in your own fishbowl. That's why I highly recommend that you find someone who can challenge you, or someone, some people who can challenge you, and then point out to you what you're not even considering. Number six. Undervaluation of services.
Societal biases tend to undervalue women's work, as evidenced by the wage gap and women's disproportionate unpaid domestic labor. But women entrepreneurs themselves often undervalue their offerings, leading to lower revenue. Carnegie Mellon University's Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society has highlighted that women entrepreneurs tend to undervalue their worth, which results in [00:26:00] underpricing their services and products.
A report by the American Association of University Women corroborates this and also shows that women tend to undervalue and diminish their professional skills. In adolescence. . Yes, as early as adolescence. So I'm going to leave you with something very wise that my client's teenage daughter said to her when she was worrying about charging too much.
She said, mom, isn't it probably more likely that you're undercharging rather than overcharging? Number 7. Limited Marketing Budgets. Because of many of the reasons mentioned previously, women owned businesses may have smaller marketing budgets, which can mean limited visibility and lower customer acquisition.
A study by the United States Bureau of Labor in 2023 showed that marketing contributes about as much to growth as the contributions of either R& D or software. [00:27:00] So it might be time for you to rethink your marketing budget or get creative about low cost, high return guerrilla marketing. And I'll tell you one thing other than budget that gets in the way of women marketing themselves, and that is number eight on our list.
It's exposure intolerance. Now, that's a term I made up, but it fits. Many women experience greater discomfort with public visibility than men and are intolerant of that discomfort. But visibility and personal branding are key aspects of business growth. For instance, a study on academic seminars from the peer reviewed megajournal Plus One Found that women asked fewer questions after academic seminars compared to men, and reported internal reasons, such as not being able to work up the nerve.
Additionally, research from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics on goal setting behaviors revealed that while men performed consistently across both private and public goal setting environments, Women's [00:28:00] performance declined in public settings, indicating increased discomfort or pressure. Think about it.
Women are physically more vulnerable than men and have needed to be more vigilant to protect themselves. This is just my theory. I've shared in episode 34 my own fears and challenges with this regarding my upbringing, sexual assault, and having had a stalker. I'm linking to a study examining neighborhood safety interventions where women reported increased fear after the intervention.
Whereas men reported decreased fear, highlighting gender differences and perceptions of safety and comfort in public spaces, and how impacted we can be by even the idea of threat. My clients tell me that they fear the pitchforks, too. They fear the public animosity or censure in reaction to something they say or do.
My take on that is that our ancestors survived and procreated by being the women who kept their heads down and remained safe. [00:29:00] We were bred for this. And conditioned to this too, obviously, in the same way we talked about with STEM subjects. Luckily, we can desensitize ourselves to any emotional intolerance with proper support.
I had one client who decided to go cold turkey, and after only having gone live a few times on social media and feeling terrible doing so. She decided that she wanted change, and she committed to going live for 30 days straight. By the end, it felt like business as usual, and she continued to build her business around these types of social media engagements.
Now, that cold turkey approach is not for everyone, but if it's not too triggering to you, I recommend at least some baby steps starting today. Where is the edge of your comfort zone, and how can you safely stretch it? And also, how can you support other women in their visibility, even if their efforts are imperfect?
And [00:30:00] also, how can you support other women in their visibility, even if their efforts are imperfect, rather than slipping into judgment? Let's talk about number nine, stereotypes about leadership. Women can face skepticism about their leadership abilities, impacting their ability to secure partnerships and funding or lead teams or be considered for contracts where leadership will be required.
In another report from the American Association of University Women called Barriers and Bias, they report findings that illuminate how traits traditionally associated with effective leadership, such as assertiveness and decisiveness, are frequently viewed as masculine. Therefore, it's easier for men to be selected for and to fulfill leadership roles.
When women do step into leadership roles and exhibit those traits, they may be judged harshly and disliked because they don't conform to the typically female behaviors. If they don't exhibit those [00:31:00] traits, they might be judged as not a competent leader. It results in a double bind where they are criticized whether they conform to or defy the gender norms.
And unfortunately, that criticism can come from other women as well. I noticed with women active duty soldiers that I was working with in the U. S. Army, to lead troops, you need to be able to project your voice and not be perceived as a pushover. But for many women, in order to project our voices, even in boardrooms, We need to increase tension on our vocal cords, leading to sounding more strained.
That can be perceived as more emotional or insecure, obviously not prized leadership traits. And some of these women admitted that after years of being the butt of jokes or not taken seriously, they possibly had learned to compensate in ways that would not be their chosen behavior. Now, obviously, this is totally anecdotal and a very small sample.
Meant, really just to illustrate, but before we [00:32:00] move on, there's something else, really crazy. Memory can be affected by expectations. In a 2012 paper called Gender Stereotypes and Workplace Bias, the author cites four different studies supporting how, quote, a woman's behavior that is consistent with expectations held about her is more likely to be more readily recalled by evaluators.
Whereas, her behavior that is inconsistent with expectations is more likely to be forgotten. End quote. So not only do women have to land the position and then perform in the position, they have to moderate the narrative about their performance after the fact. Our work then, my friend, is to question and stretch gender stereotypes about leadership.
Even the ones we notice in ourselves as we evaluate other women. Of course, we also need to educate ourselves and others, and to hone our individual style of leadership, and build standout, [00:33:00] highly productive teams of people who are excited to work with us. Number 10. Under representation in leadership roles prior to entrepreneurship.
Because of perceived leadership inferiority, male entrepreneurs may enter entrepreneurship with more experience in management and other key positions. A research article in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology examined how various types of prior experience affects the early stage performance of new ventures.
And found that prior leadership experience aids in helping build teams and develop business planning, among other skills. Women who have not had these experiences might need to be prepared for a steeper learning curve, while still recognizing that they likely bring many other skills to the table.
Unfortunately, in my line of work with high achieving women who have big expectations, I see a lot of shame crop up around what we know and don't know, and where our skills are [00:34:00] highly developed or where we still have room to develop them. My goal in providing this perspective were Business is just a learning curve, and where the skills you might lack coexist with other highly developed skills, is to remove some of that shame.
Number 11. Imposter Syndrome. Many women experience self doubt that can hinder their willingness to scale or go after important opportunities. A comprehensive meta analysis that we'll link to, encompassing over 100 studies and involving more than 42, 000 participants. revealed that women consistently score higher on both the occurrence of and the intensity of imposter syndrome.
Maya Angelou said, I've written 11 books, but each time I think, uh oh, they're going to find out now. I run a game on everybody and they're going to find me out. If you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, You know that what you're [00:35:00] thinking and believing affects everything from the action you take to the opportunities you notice To the decisions you make to how you show up.
So this points to the why Behind many of the phenomena we've already discussed, such as women undercharging. So if women are on average more affected by self doubt than men, it stands to reason that we will see differences in outcomes as well. Luckily, imposter syndrome is a highly curable affliction, it just takes re patterning your thoughts.
A 2020 study published in Frontiers in Psychology has separated over 100 new employees into three groups. One group received coaching to develop their mindset, another received training, and a third was the control group. The coaching group was able to sustainably reduce their imposter syndrome scores and improve their self efficacy while reducing the tendency to cover up errors and the [00:36:00] fear of being evaluated poorly.
Number 12. Reluctance to delegate. Research indicates that women entrepreneurs often exhibit a reluctance to delegate tasks, which can limit their ability to focus on strategic growth initiatives. They may feel the need to manage every detail of their business, increasing their own cognitive load, and taking their eyes off the prize.
They may desire to act communally rather than delegate, or feel guilty if they delegate. And they may fear backlash, too. This according to an Academy of Management Journal article that we're going to link to. The same article points out that when women do delegate, because of their negative associations with it, they have lower quality interactions with their subordinates.
This is an example of why the three day workweek model that we promote at The Uncommon Way can be so powerful. It's the constraint that forces you to reconsider every moment of how you spend your [00:37:00] time, and the consequences of not delegating, and how you're building your team and your processes, and Then, with your extra time, you have more space to reflect and to think strategically.
And like Peter Drucker said, follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. I recently had a client do a time audit and it's sparking a substantial reorganization of her priorities. Her workflow and her strategies. Once you see the time and effort that you have been leaking unnecessarily, you can't un see it.
It's a beautiful thing. Number 13. The second shift and expectations about caregiving. Women on average bear a disproportionate share of caregiving responsibilities, whether for children, elderly family members, or household management. leaving them mentally or physically taxed and distracted compared to their male counterparts.[00:38:00]
It's known as the second shift, to describe how we'll often work a full day but then continue with more unpaid domestic work. A 2019 study by the International Labor Organization reports that women dedicate on average 3. 2 times More time than men do to unpaid care work, and a study published in the Journal of Gerontology found that caregiving exacerbates gender differences in depression and physical health, too.
On top of that, these expectations create a situation where working moms feel guilty. Fraun Morgan is a researcher who studies the well being of working moms. And she's remarked on the, quote, perverse social acceptance of, in fact, social expectation for working mothers to experience guilt as a result of their choice to work, end quote.
And they do feel guilt, appropriately, like they're supposed to. Morgan's doctoral [00:39:00] dissertation revealed that for women in her study, 85 percent routinely experience feelings of guilt more than any other. A 2019 study in the Journal of Vocational Behavior reports that this mom guilt also lowers well being and brings on destructive behaviors.
Also, I'm quoting, One way in which mothers may compensate for feeling guilty is by limiting the time and energy they invest in their work, spending this time and energy on their family instead. According to Morgan, the depth and the impact of this guilt are not easily identified by the working mother experiencing it.
And women may judge other women for their work choices. According to a report from the Journal of Applied Psychology from 2021 that was looking at cross gender attitudes about deprioritizing childcare, female participants were more likely to perceive that when a parent deprioritized childcare for self [00:40:00] care reasons, That parent put their child at greater risk.
Luckily, guilt is not a necessary component of being a working mom. When women were given tools to re evaluate and re frame their experience, 67 percent in the study reported enhanced positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning slash purpose, And four months later, their experiences were similar.
There are many lessons here. Choose your partners wisely, critically examine your actions, especially those knee jerk reactions to take on more tasks or take over caregiver roles, and get coaching or therapy if needed. Examine the breakdown of labor for everyone in the family and create healthy, [00:41:00] equitable boundaries for yourself.
Number 14. Societal pressure to do it all. In addition to being good moms, Working women often feel societal pressure to be good partners, good friends, good daughters, good community members, whether that's organizing and shopping for social get togethers or gathering toys for tots at Christmas. They're also expected to look a certain way and act a certain way.
That pressure to do it all can result in burnout, reduced focus on scaling businesses, and a reluctance to delegate tasks or hire help. An article in the Review of Economics of the Household reports that women feel more exhaustion from paid work, both mental and physical, than men do. Investigating the reasons for that, they uncovered that women who were identified as traditional We're more likely to experience burnout, leading the researchers to conclude that it was the women's perspectives [00:42:00] regarding their role in society that created the large gender gap in burnout.
Regarding the pressure to look a certain way, a study out of Harvard's School of Public Health calculated that women's body dissatisfaction cost the U. S. economy 305 billion. An appearance based discrimination costs the U. S. economy 501 billion. We could easily do a podcast series on the pressure to do it all, but I'll end here so that we can move on to our final reason.
Number 15. Decrease self promotion. Many cultures discourage women from self promotion, making it harder for women entrepreneurs to advocate for their businesses or publicly celebrate their successes. This affects branding, visibility, marketing, internal team dynamics, key elements of business growth. In a Harvard Business Review article, the authors of a study on women's self promotion in the [00:43:00] workplace remarked that, quote, in every setting we explored, we observed a substantial gender gap in self promotion.
Women systematically provided less favorable assessments of their own past performance and potential future ability. Then equally performing men. And when over 100, 000 clinical research articles on PubMed were analyzed, researchers observed that male scientists are more likely to use words like unique and unprecedented to describe their work than women are.
Even though papers that use these kinds of descriptors are more likely to get cited. This was reported in an article in the British Medical Association's journal called the BMJ. In a fascinating research article called A Test of Three Theories, which was examining why women inhibit themselves from self promotion.
They had university women write a scholarship competition essay. Some groups of these women were [00:44:00] told that their name would be identified, and others were told that there would be a pseudonym. The results showed that women could self promote more effectively when writing under a pseudonym, but also that afterwards in group discussion, they would advocate on behalf of other women receiving the scholarship rather than themselves.
Both of these results pointed to women's fear of backlash if they were seen as self promoting. When three women owned firms conducted a national survey about self promotion, they noticed an interesting catch 22. 83 percent reported being inspired by hearing women talk about their successes and accomplishments.
But 69 percent would rather minimize their own successes than tell people about them. And 50 percent of women would rather downplay than talk about their strengths and abilities. And get this, 27 percent of women even said they'd prefer to visit the dentist than talk about themselves [00:45:00] in public. It also showed that women age 55 and above are more averse to self promotion than younger women.
That's good news that the tide might be starting to shift, but also unfortunate because older women might have more career accomplishments. And the younger women need to see role models self promoting. And yet in a report that analyzed many different strategies and tools for career advancement, the most important one for women was, you guessed it, making their achievements known.
I'm quoting, When women were most proactive in making their achievements visible, they advanced further, were more satisfied with their careers, and had greater compensation growth than women who were less focused on calling attention to their successes. All the strategies used by women, making their achievements known, by ensuring their manager was aware of their accomplishments, seeking feedback and credit as appropriate.[00:46:00]
And asking for a promotion when they felt it was deserved was the only one associated with compensation growth. Boom. This report came from Catalyst, an organization advancing women in the workplace, and they utilize some of the world's largest firms to gather the data. So you and I have got to do more of this, my friend.
I love the reframe that self promotion can actually be an act of service to women. Inspiring them to also speak up about their accomplishments. Part of the reason I love it goes back to that social conditioning. We're conditioned to want to help people, even if it causes us discomfort. So when we frame it in this way, we're more likely to allow ourselves to act on it.
This is a fantastic brain hack, but it's also the smart thing to do and the right thing to do. Why shouldn't we be proud of our accomplishments? I've [00:47:00] mentioned this before in this podcast, it's a trick that I learned from life coach Rachel Hart. But look at a picture of yourself as a little girl and imagine telling her, oh, it's not that big of a deal, or, oh, it doesn't really count because of X or Y.
No. If we were talking to her, or even to a friend, we'd be like, this is amazing, well done, you knocked it out of the park. So, after all of this research, I am now more committed than ever to helping women earn more money and create more autonomy. We can go further, and we need to go further. Especially in today's climate, when we're watching some of the bros acting with total self interest.
And are thinking, we'd do things differently. It is precisely why women need more power. And I believe that we can not only create more revenue, but we can refine capitalism as we do so. We can create a more [00:48:00] responsible capitalism where we're not destroying our workers. And that starts with ourselves. And no longer working long hours and feeling stressed out all the time.
It's time for a new way of doing business. Especially for most service businesses, where you do not really need to work more than three day work weeks. And when we stick to the old five or even seven day work weeks, instead of constraining ourselves, we rob ourselves of the high level thinking that propels us forward.
Okay, couple of quick technical notes and some additional fun and encouraging facts. I mentioned earlier that it was hard for me to find the exact percentage of male owned businesses that crossed the 1 million mark, according to census data. That's because the way people report the data varies. Some are aggregating non employer businesses only.
So of course, there are going to be relatively few solopreneurs or freelancers making over 1 million in revenue. Usually when you're getting into multiple six [00:49:00] figures, you have at least one employee. And since there are over four times as many non employer businesses as there are businesses with employees, according to our last census data, that skews the number significantly.
And then there are some people reporting that are aggregating both types of businesses together. One more thing, just a PSA, really fact check the sources that ChatGPT offers you. I'm so grateful for AI because I can't imagine having created this episode without it and wouldn't have found all of this amazing research.
But often, it would give me an article and include a brilliant sounding description, but then when you read the report itself, it doesn't say anything like that. So, check everything. Now for some encouraging news. Women owned businesses are rapidly increasing. Between 2012 and 2019, businesses owned by U. S.
based women grew by 16. 7 percent in comparison to 5. [00:50:00] 2 percent for male owned businesses, according to the National Women's Business Council. And while many businesses still fail in their first year, That number might be reduced by half if they have mentorship, which is what the SCORE Association found in their own survey.
Another fun fact, 76. 9 percent of women business owners are over the age of 35. So for all of my youngins out there, way to go, badasses. And for everyone over 35, You are the perfect age to have a business. Keep going. All right my friend. That is it for this week. Let's talk again on Tuesday.
Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the clarity first strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit the uncommon way.com. See you next [00:51:00] time.
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