Women in Business (Photo from pexels.com by Pavel Danilyuk)

For centuries, women have battled a stereotype that involves staying home to cook, clean and care for the family. But for the last 20 years, more women have opted to start their own businesses, even outpacing men, and they have been thriving.

Unique Strengths Women Bring to Business Leadership

One big advantage women offer the business world and management, in particular, is that they have different sets of life and work experiences than men do and thus different perspectives. Their skills are unique as well. Skills and qualities like task management, communication, patience and empathy are vital to succeed in a work environment, and women tend to excel in encouraging others to talk through problems, stay organized, remain patient and be understanding.

Women are more emotionally intelligent. Running a business with greater consideration for the people we interact with – including employees, customers, and suppliers – makes better leaders. Women seem to inherently understand this. Simply put, women value relationships, which can be leveraged to advance the business. They also make the people working around them feel valued, as they aren’t afraid to share the credit of a job well done. We love to work together towards a common goal and we definitely understand that having more than one “cook” in the kitchen can add value to the whole recipe.

Overcoming Challenges and Thriving in Entrepreneurship

Women have more experience in tough situations. First of all, we often have to work twice as hard as men to be taken seriously – so this makes women stronger in the long run and more ready to face all the challenges that come with running a business. We are definitely better at multitasking; with the ability to balance many different roles and responsibilities at the same time. Women are notorious for starting businesses with less capital and using that capital more wisely. We have an inner capacity to balance budgets and use other women’s capacities as multi-taskers to perform more with less cost.

In the business sector many leaders second-guess themselves; which is quite normal – and this is why managers or leaders have consultants. And in many cases, leaders are faced with tough decisions, where risks can be incurred.  According to research from the Centre of Entrepreneurship, both men and women entrepreneurs say they are prepared to take risk. But women lead the pack with 87% who see themselves as financial risk takers, compared to 73% of men. In addition, 80% of women say they are likely to see opportunities where others see risk, compared to 67% of men.

Summary

Last but not least, in today’s world, people want to see women succeed. Decades ago, there wasn’t much interest in why women weren’t achieving the highest levels of success in business at a national level. Since then, it has become incredibly clear that women entrepreneurs drive economic growth and stability, many people are pushing to educate women and make sure they have comparable opportunities to create strong, healthy, vibrant businesses. This focused attention makes and increased awareness boosts women-owned businesses and helps women run better businesses.

In a few words and to sum this topic: “There is no limit to what we women can accomplish!