Gender differences in business growth?

This afternoon, I attended a Women’s Business Network luncheon where Dr. Barbara Orser talked about challenges facing women entrepreneurs. Barbara is a professor at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. She discussed that although women own almost half of new small and medium-sized businesses in Canada, women-owned businesses are smaller and less profitable than those owned by their male counterparts. Her talk asked the question: Why don’t businesses owned by women grow? The barriers to growth may not be obvious. She made two points of particular interest- (1) women do not have less access to institutional financing than men; and, (2) both men and women care about work-life balance.There is good reason to think more about this question of growth.

Barbara’s research and papers can be found at the Telfer School of Managment website at http://www.telfer.uottawa.ca/.