Women and family businesses

Small business is a permanently adored icon of American culture. Even heads of gigantic corporations like to pose as innovative, spunky entrepreneurs.

But the realities of small business aren't always so ideal. Timothy Habbershon writes about one important issue with small business in Business Week's SmallBiz Spring 2006: It's a Man's World: Gender bias pervades small family businesses (behind subscription). Describing a study he recently conducted on "small family-owned companies", he writes:

Nowhere are the effects of gender bias more pernicious than in succession strategies. When we spoke with younger generations in family businesses, we found that while men assumed they would inherit the business, women didn't know what their roles might be. Those attitudes are formed early: The sons, but not the daughters, said they worked in the company with Dad as kids and did summer internships there. ...

It's all too easy for men who have inherited a business from their father to assume that their own son should be next in line.The common practice of giving the business to the sons and a generous inheritance to the daughters sounds fine in the lawyer's office. But a growing business has the potential to provide income and employment for generations, while even a large inheritance, split between children, doesn't have as much upside. We saw how giving money to daughters, rather than inviting them into the business, disinherited daughters and their children and created long-term discord. One brother said he knew his sister was hurt by this practice "even today," but was planning to pass the business on to his own sons.

But you'll never hear a candidate saying that on the stump. The conventions of politics require that small business be celebrated as an endlessly virtuous thing. Plus, even the most pro-labor candidates who are willing to blast Big Business still want to bring in contributions and support from wealthy entrepreneurs, or corporate execs who like to imagine themselves so.

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