When women leave the ranks of full-time management to start their own businesses, we typically attribute this to two basic and plausible reasons.
One is that they have made a decision to devote more time to start or raise a family, or to take care of ageing parents, or the like - a work/life balance choice. Many women, in the context of this situation, find a way to give expression to their professional interests by starting their own businesses, sometimes right away, and sometimes after the situation that prompted the decision has resolved or changed - the kids have started school, for example. Modern communication technology makes this not only fairly simple, but a brilliant solution for such women.
The other reason is that they have hit the pernicious glass ceiling, and have determined that they will build their own future rather than being reduced to helping fashion someone else’s. These women refuse to let the scope of their ability and ambition to be constrained by others, and choose to test it themselves as entrepreneurs.
These explanations are reasonably accurate (as far as they go), and they point both to failures of the current management environment and to ways to resolve them. If you are a manager or owner of a firm where such talent could be of advantage, you should pay heed to these lessons.
On the other hand, the responses of these women to these constraints have two benefits. One is that they add to the dynamism of the economy, increasing its diversity, innovation, and efficiency, and expanding its reach and the solutions it offers consumers. The other is that they create structures where female managerial talent can find a home, and where it will benefit its firms to the great loss of those other organizations who have allowed it to drift away.
But we’re not done yet; there’s actually another reason encouraging women to leave regular employment and to start their own businesses:
They’re fed up with the poor way men manage.
It turns out that among the many lessons women learn on the job about managing is how not to do it - and much of that stems directly from behaviors that men exhibit as managers that they believe are organizationally relevant or that contribute mightily to their own reputations, but that in fact are not only not related to good management, but that often actively detract from it. See here for an excellent take on this, and on its relation to the exodus of female talent.
There is much to celebrate in these unintended consequences. But first, we should note and learn from them.
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Technorati Tags: work/life balance, glass ceiling, entrepreneurs, management, innovation, Women in management, women entrepreneurs
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