PinkPowerSuit.com
Contact: Natasha Clark
natasha@pinkpowersuit.com
(403) 782-4287
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
--COULD MOM ENTREPRENEURS BE PEACE KEEPERS IN THE MOMMY WARS?--
Red Deer, AB, June 23, 2007-- Stay-at-home moms and working moms are battling it out over kids, money and, who should feel more guilt. Stay-at-home moms are leaving their careers to be their children's primary caregiver and some cannot understand why all moms woudn't make the same decision. Working moms struggle to balance family and career, some assuming that stay-at-home moms are either lazy, not contributing to the family finances, or rich.
A study by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce1 reports the number of women-owned businesses in Canada to be rising 60% faster than men-owned businesses, a noteworthy statistic considering strong labour market conditions. If the market is doing well, yet record numbers of women are leaving the work force to start businesses, one can infer the driving force to be choice rather than need. In fact, the study goes on to say that men are 1.5 times more likely than women to become entrepreneurs because of unhappiness in their corporate job.
But, the same study also indicates that while women are more likely to start businesses, they are less likely to grow their businesses!
This prompts the question: what is driving women to leave the corporate world and start businesses, but then choose to run them on a smaller scale?
It seems that women are starting businesses because they crave a certain lifestyle. One third of Canadian business owners have children under the age of 12. Of women-owned businesses, 52.7% are home based.2
Is it possible that women are resolving the mommy wars between the working moms and stay-at-home moms by demonstrating through work-at-home enterprises that we really can have it all? Can at-home businesses help moms to eliminate guilt? Is the chaos lessened when moms give up full-time careers and bring their work home?
"Certainly not," says Natasha Clark, founder of PinkPowerSuit.com, a mentoring website for moms starting businesses without a lot of capital. "Guilt is in our DNA. But when women feel like they have choices, they feel empowered. When moments of guilt creep in, and they will, moms can remember they chose from a few options for reasons that were right for them. There's chaos anytime you bring an entire enterprise into your family home. But the degree of that chaos is manageable. The beauty of being an entrepreneur is that you can decide how busy you want to be."
When media discuss financial and lifestyle options for new mothers, perhaps they would do good to include work-at-home enterprise into the list of options, empowering women through choices.
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1 CIBC Study- Women Entrepreneurs: Leading the Charge
2 RBC, reprinted from March 7, 2003 newsletter of GDSourcing.
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