The trend towards entrepreneurship and self-employment has exploded in the last decade of the 20th century, and women have played an important role in this phenomenon. Many of the challenges that women in business encounter are similar to those all small businesses face regardless of ownership or gender. The challenge may be more complicated for women, however, because of gender or the influence of cultural, ethnic, political, and economic biases. Women's management styles also tend to differ from men's due to their different skill sets and life experiences. However, as in business in general, women entrepreneurs benefit dramatically, especially in strength and confidence, from learning, training, sharing, and association.
Women prosper from networking, sharing their knowledge and experiences, and mutual support.
Benefits of association Women entrepreneurs show up in the most amazing places with interesting tales about doing business against all odds. One such young woman is Hilda Broomfield Letemplier, a native Canadian Inuit woman, who lives in the remote, northern community in Labrador, Canada. In 1991, with great difficulty, she went into the pressure-pipe steel fabrication business with her husband. In November 1997, Ms. Letemplier attended Canada's first ever businesswomen's trade mission to the United States. At the conference in Washington, DC, she joined more than 100 other Canadian businesswomen to participate in policy discussions with government officials, workshops about conducting business across the border, and business-matching sessions with other businesswomen and business leaders.