and they are becoming prized swing voters in the 2004 election.
I'll highlight just a couple of salient points made in the article:
• ... female entrepreneurship is one of the great success stories of our time. Women today control just under half of all the small businesses in America. In the past seven years the number of woman-owned firms with employees has grown by 28% -- three times the growth rate among all employer firms. Today woman business owners represent about 5% of the voting-age population -- more than all the registered voters in Florida and more than enough to select our next President.
• "Woman entrepreneurs are the wild card in this election," says Erin Fuller, executive director of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) in McLean, Va.
• Kerry said that women aren't getting "the recognition they deserve for the opportunities they are providing to millions of employees, the contributions they make to communities, and the overall strengthening of our economy."
• ... and a quote from one of my favorite people, Dr. Marsha Firestone, founder of the Women Presidents' Organization:
"Even though the Bush administration cut the Small Business Administration's funding by 25% and eliminated the SBA administrator's cabinet seat, woman small-business advocates feel that the Republicans have done a better job of reaching out to them lately. "Clinton would come to town and never call us," says Marsha Firestone, president of the New York-based Women Presidents Organization (WPO). "Bush always calls. We're at the table as small-business owners. " President Bush has given two major speeches to female entrepreneur audiences in the past year. In May his campaign launched a "W Stands for Women" initiative that stressed the economic contributions of woman business owners."
• ... woman entrepreneurs are an increasingly articulate and organized political force. "Building coalitions is something women are good at," says Fuller. Today an alphabet soup of nonpartisan advocacy groups -- NAWBO, the WPO, and Women Impacting Public Policy, to name just three -- are sponsoring voter-registration drives ...
To read the entire article, visit Fortune Small Business: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/smallbusiness/articles/0,15114,654044,00.htm
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