Women as entrepreneurs in transformational roles.
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More African-American women own businesses.
Better
financing opportunities may have fueled the trend.
African and
African American entrepreneurs have always been a part of America’s economic and historical history. An entrepreneur is a person who organizes,creates,and operates a business organization. Some current notable of African American female entrepreneurs are Oprah Winfrey,talk Show Host and owner and founder of Harpo Productions Company, Madame C.J. Walker, Hairdresser, entrepreneur, and educational counselor Catherine Elizabeth “Cathy” Hughes, Chairperson and executive of Baltimore's Radio One Station, Audrey Rice Oliver, the President and CEO of Integrated Business Solutions, Inc., a multimillion dollar computer systems company.
While the percentage of
self-employed whites and Latinos has remained stagnant, an increasing number of
African-Americans have started their own businesses since 1997.
--->>For African-American women, this number increased by an even more substantial 50 percent (Bennett, 2003).
Women are making the pleasant discovery that the most important investment strategy they can undertake is investing in themselves. It is perhaps why so many women are starting their own businesses. Between 1987 and 1996, the number of black female-owned businesses increased by 135 percent and as of 1996, there were 405,200 businesses owned by black females, creating an unprecedented legacy of wealth building among African Americans. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, women-owned business is the fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy.
Those numbers are likely to increase since many states are beginning to take a particular interest in helping women get started in their own businesses. Of course, this kind of help was not always available to women who wanted to go out on their own as in the case of Madame C.J. Walker.
Madam Walker not only made herself wealthy but she made entrepreneurship among hundreds of black women possible and almost single-handedly financed the Harlem Renaissance and the early organizational efforts of the NAACP.
The last decades of the 20th century and perhaps whether they knew plenty or next to nothing, businesswomen who succeed seem to operate under a common and practical success framework: Study the business, work hard, give something back, plan, focus and respect fear. You can never have too much planning and focus, they say, but fear is a necessary active ingredient recommended only in small doses.
Businesswomen say they are noticing that with each generation, African-American women actually are becoming more daring, making the job traditions and the economic playing field for women as a whole more dynamic. Each passing generation leaves fewer excuses not to soar and each success story provides the all-important role models, the "you-can-do-it-too" psychic encouragement and, most importantly, the tools for wealth building which can determine the destiny of a people ( Bennett, 2003).
But the accomplishments of Walker, Winfrey, Oliver, Hughes and thousands of successful black women are built on a basic business model, one that has more to do with economic reality than emotional responses. Successful African American female entrepreneurs do what all successful entrepreneurs do—they identified a public need and fill it. And by doing so the "hairdresser," the "talk show host" and the diligent female business owners become millionaires.
Often time their new economic status is not planned—it occurs because of their efforts to operate a viable business. Rarely do African American female business owners set out to build wealth for the sake of wealth. "When you develop yourself for the benefit of other individuals you become like a magnet: The wealth finds you," says Ms. Hughes. "If you become obsessed with building wealth it eludes you, very much like looking for love," she says, "you never find it" (Bennett, 2003).
List of Contents
Oprah Winfrey, a dynamic entrepreneur
Madame C.J. Walker, a diligent entrepreneur
Audrey Rice, president and CEO of Business Solutions
Cathy Hughes, owner of Radio One Inc.
Black Women entrepreneurs
References
MS Brown
