Small business loans for women: Why women need and deserve special financing.
Maybe it’s easier to start with an explanation of why women deserve financing designated specifically as small business loans for women. The numbers tell the story best.
• Small businesses owned by women have created more than 13 million jobs and, in 2008, created $1.9 trillion in revenue.
• Women own 10 million businesses, accounting for 40% of all privately owned businesses.
In other words, small business loans for women aren’t provided because of an inherent lack of ability that renders them “special needs” entrepreneurs; they are an essential segment of the U.S. economy.
It might be fair and even true to say they’ve achieved such successes specifically because of small business loans for women, and that without them, women’s businesses would fail or even fail to see the light of day, never getting the essential financing.
So how to explain the evolution of small business loans for women? Why are they more necessary than say, small business loans for men?
Nearly all small businesses are started with personal savings and investments from friends and family members. For a number of reasons those financing sources are limited or entirely unavailable for women.
A number of social circumstances create the necessity of small business loans for women. Women are paid less than men for doing the same job—20% less. That’s a tremendous improvement over the 40% wage gap that existed 30 years ago, but that wage disparity makes it 20% more difficult for women to build personal savings. And, of course, because a woman’s best friends are usually other women, that avenue of business financing is often a dead end street.
As well, women head 85% of single-parent households, placing another impediment on their ability to finance their own small businesses, and for many of these women owning a small business may be their only option for overcoming the 20% wage gap and achieving wealth and family stability.
Without small business loans for women—specifically for women—the U.S. would be denied an enormous pool of talent, jobs and revenue and families would be less stable.