Women battle gender bias.

• Author: Richardson, Jeffrey
• Position: Alaskan women business owners and managers - Includes related articles

Alaskan women business owners and managers say they've succeeded through persistence and hard work, by proving their abilities and by learning from role models.

The last 10 years have brought a marked improvement in the level of respect accorded female entrepreneurs and employees, say many Alaskan women. But they agree that women still have to work harder and do better to succeed in business, reflecting the persistence of stubborn, if sometimes subtle, forms of gender-based discrimination.

"Being a woman in business is not easy and not for the weak-kneed. Women who have their own businesses have a million times tougher row to hoe," says Linda Henrickson, owner of Anchorage-based Linder Construction. "Men say things to me they would never, never in a million years say to my husband."

Henrickson still bristles as she describes the double standards and insults she endured during her early efforts to become established in a male-dominated industry. But quality work and knowledge of the construction business allowed her to gain ground despite the resistance. She says many women have learned to deflect sexual come-ons without sacrificing personal integrity or their professional standing, and men, despite the social conditioning that relationships with women are primarily sexual, are getting the message.

"Men are much more aware than they used to be of the words they use and body language that are offensive to women," Henrickson says.

Although not all women have been equally affected by sex discrimination, experiences with gender barriers of one kind or another are common. Jody Hoffman, owner of Hoffman Management Co., an Anchorage residential property management firm, has no hair-raising tales to tell about Byzantine encounters with male counterparts, but says men still have trouble relating to women as peers in the world of business. "Men typically feel more comfortable dealing with other men," she says.

Sue Linford, president, general manager and major shareholder of Linford of Alaska, a food distributing company headquartered in Anchorage, agrees there is more work to do on the issue of gender bias in business. "Women have to work harder and maybe use a little more psychology," Linford says.

Like many women, she has encountered a tendency to take women less seriously. Linford is especially concerned with the status of women in the broad social sense. "Women control the bulk of wealth in this nation, but we are not represented on corporate boards in proportion," she explains. "A lot of it has to do with our culture, with male ego, not with whether women are qualified. Those of us with a few more stripes have been fighting this for a long time."

Women say that issues of sexism confront female entrepreneurs and employees alike, though discrimination can take somewhat different forms. For employees, lower pay and limited promotional opportunities are common gender-bias problems. For entrepreneurs, cutting favorable deals with suppliers and gaining access to capital are prevalent obstacles to success. For women who are also members of a racial or ethnic minority, these problems can be magnified manyfold.

While some data on the performance of women-owned businesses are available on a national basis, much more thorough research has been done on sex discrimination toward female employees, chiefly in the area of salaries. Estimates of the number of businesses owned by women in the U.S. range from 4.1 million to 5.4 million. According to federal projections, women will own 50 percent of U.S. businesses by the year 2000.

Data collected by the Census Bureau show that small businesses owned by white men had far greater revenues than those owned by women during the 1980s. In a 1987 survey, businesses owned by white men averaged annual receipts of $189,000, compared with the average $70,000 in receipts generated by white, female-owned businesses. Minority firms owned by women are faring even worse: For the same period, receipts ranged from $64,000 per year for Asian-owned businesses to $32,000 per year for American Indian/Alaska Native-owned businesses.

The National Women's Business Council, created by Congress in 1988 to review the status of women business owners nationwide, identify barriers facing them and make policy recommendations, has revealed several important findings about women-owned businesses:

* Businesses owned by women fail at a rate 7 percent to 11 percent higher than those owned by men;

* The most significant barrier to the success of women-owned firms is lack of capital;

* Women in business generally take fewer risks in terms of expansion, usually because of undercapitalization.

In a more encouraging light, gross receipts of women-owned businesses nearly tripled between 1982 and 1987, according to the council.

Additional gains recently have been noted by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners in Washington, D.C. Foundation statistics indicate 1992 will likely be the first year when more Americans work for women-owned enterprises than for Fortune 500 companies. The foundation says women own 28 percent of all U.S. businesses, employing nearly 11 million people.

Foundation data also contradict the...