Management Archive O.K., so men are from Mars, and women are from Venus. These questions are generating some serious interest because a significant percentage of entrepreneurs are now women, and recent research suggests they run their businesses differently from men. The question is particularly germane as skepticism mounts toward the dot-com mantra that profits don't matter and as managers realize the toll that relentless growth takes on their families and those of their employees. Positive and negative factors are behind the business-approach gender gap.
Women tend to have less access to capital than men, which inhibits fast growth.
Those who started business previously tended to own small service businesses with low earnings and few assets. New entrepreneurs are better educated and more likely to enter the more lucrative fields of technology and finance. In men, the goals tend to be to fulfill a market opportunity and be wealthy at a personal level. Numerous studies that track revenue and employee growth have found that women's businesses tend to grow more slowly than men's. They also tend to be smaller.