Only 50 years ago, not a single female was to be found in the world of big business (other than reception and administrative roles) but today, roughly half of all American business management positions are held by women, according to the Labor Dept, and the Center for Women's Business Research claims that about 40% of all privately owned firms are run by women. What business professionals and market analysts have both been realizing over the last few years is that this influx of women to the marketplace has great influence on business, the economy, and the growth of our nation as a whole.

On the surface, just the ins and outs of daily business, analysts have found an abundance of factors that make women at least equal to their male counterparts in the ways that they manage their businesses. A study of business executives conducted in 2000 revealed that employers, coworkers, and subordinates all rated female executives higher on a basic performance evaluation than they did male executives. According to a 2000 BusinessWeek article titled "As Leaders, Women Rule," the researchers stumbled onto the findings entirely by accident, as part of an ordinary performance review that initially had no intent to find gender trends. The results that they found, though, confirmed what businesspeople had long been saying: women are more collaborative, more communicative, and less prone to egotism than their male counterparts. What it all boils down to is that the average woman in business is more likely to pursue the benefit of the company over personal gain or bravado.

That is one of the many reasons that it is such a good idea for women to start small business franchise: they're wired to succeed in different ways than men. Though a franchise like INTERIORS by Decorating Den is designed to provide greater opportunity for success than any other kind of startup business, it is still vital to the success of the operation that the franchisee lay her own ego down for the good of the business, whether that means calling on others for design help or admitting to clients when an order has been delayed and offering a discount in order to keep the client's business.

Especially when it comes to home based businesses, clients very much like a business owner who maintains frequent, honest communication with them about the status of the job. Though a Blue Coast Financial Group franchisee could potentially see things only in terms of dollars and cents, the financial success of a client's business is very personal to the client. Therefore, a helpful female Blue Coast Financial Group owner who can communicate person-to-person instead of business-to-business, putting herself in a position to help the client and not simply profit from a transaction, is of great assistance. As a whole, women are just better at seeing people rather than merely seeing tasks.

Interestingly enough, although managerial women in corporate America are sometimes held in higher regard than men, they still often do not ascend to upper-executive positions within their corporations. Some hold that this is because women, despite having the same business degrees as the men, are often set on career tracks that don't have direct access to the higher echelons of the business world; frequently finding themselves in Human Resources or Public Relations, they get stuck beneath a glass ceiling.

However, with the business opportunities that a work at home franchise can provide, that ceiling doesn't have to hang over a female entrepreneur. Though a Glove Lady or CompuChild franchise business may not grow into a nationally acclaimed corporate giant, the female franchisee is always at the helm, and that means that she determines how many employees she has, how the business is run (within franchisor standards, of course), and what roles she plays within its daily operations. And with such entrepreneurial experience as the CEO of her own business, should she ever decide to move into the corporate realm, she will have the experience to step out of HR and PR into more executive positions, because she has proven to have a knack for running a successful company.

According to a study in The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2000, adding to the number of female-owned firms is vital to the growth of the American economy, and ultimately, America's population. From a study of 21 nations around the world, their conclusion was that increased entrepreneurism is the biggest boost to any national economy, and economy is the single most important factor in population growth. And being that fewer women are entrepreneurs than men, getting the number of female business owners up is a prime method of building both the economy and the population.