The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team knows a bit about women-led businesses, so we thought we’d share some articles on the subject.

“Female leadership systematically underestimated” is from Human Capital Magazine, Australia’s first magazine targeted at senior human resource professionals and top corporate decision-makers.

According to the article, contrary to popular belief and even previous studies, researchers have discovered women may actually outperform in areas traditionally considered to be the domain of men.

The findings were arrived at by Utah-based leadership consultancy firm Zenger Folkman after surveying more than 7,000 business leaders. It was found that across 16 core competencies, the leaders who were consistently found to come out on top were all women. Their skills included:

• Inspirational leadership
• Motivating and developing others
• Building relationships
• Collaboration and teamwork

The researchers found that while stereotypes have assumed that men are stronger in driving for results, championing change, taking initiative, and problem solving, women actually received higher scores on all those points than did their male counterparts.

Women vs. Men

“Study Finds Few Differences Between Men and Women Business Leaders” is from Roxanne Joffe, president of CAP Brand Marketing of Sarasota, Fla.

According to Joffe, despite a long-held myth to the contrary, women business leaders are as successful as men in starting new high tech companies.  Here’s why:

The stereotypical entrepreneur – particularly the Silicon Valley version – is a 20-something, single white male who dropped out of college to work 24/7 and take enormous risks for a shot at becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Women entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are thought to be overrepresented in “lifestyle” industries and more focused on raising families than founding the next Facebook.

A study of more than 600 start-up founders and 500+ fast-growth companies published in TechCrunch deflates these myths. Entrepreneur-turned-academic Vivek Wadhwa and his team studied both men and women business leaders and their companies and found the following:

• Men and women start-up founders are motivated by the same goals – both men and women business leaders are driven by a desire to build wealth, chart their own destinies and capitalize on their business ideas.
• Men and women business leaders largely share life circumstances.  Wadhwa found that most entrepreneurs are closer to 40 than 20 when founding their companies and that most are married with children. Men were slightly more likely than women to be married.

However, Wadhwa’s team did discover some interesting differences about the business climate in which male and female entrepreneurs operate:

• Women business leaders receive more encouragement from co-founders.  According to the research, women entrepreneurs were significantly more likely than men to report that their co-founders urged them to enter into a partnership to launch a new business.
• Women start-up founders are more likely to cite a role model.  Women entrepreneurs more often reported being inspired by an entrepreneurial friend or family member than their male counterparts.

Let us know what you think by commenting below.