In the current business environment, finding a business you can trust can be a difficult process. While modern online review sites like Amy’s List and Yelp can point you in the right direction, ultimately the people you trust the most are your neighbors. Sites like your apartment complex’s internal social media (such as Active Building) and others can give you a real inside track for finding and retaining woman-owned technology businesses.
Women-owned businesses can find it difficult to stay in business, even with assistance. Because of the invisible but present social stigma against businesses owned by women, it can be hard to find new clients, even though women-owned businesses in general and tech businesses are known for their excellence in deliverables to the customer. Women in electronics, construction, contracting, and other businesses are delivering excellent results every day and to customers in every industry. Choosing to support women’s businesses is an excellent investment in local small businesses that pay off in good-paying jobs for the community and a trained workforce that you can rely on.
The statistics back up both the difficulties faced by women-led companies and the consistent excellence they deliver despite these challenges. Women-led companies experience less turnover than companies with men at the top, leading to a more experienced workforce; they are also more likely to hire and promote workers from underrepresented groups. These workers have everything needed to be exceptional employees, except for experience, and the outcomes show in the bottom line as well. Companies with female leadership outperform companies without, both in customer satisfaction and in their financials.
Problems and Opportunities
In the current environment, women-owned technology businesses are the minority of businesses. Women who own these companies often have smaller employee pools to pull from than their male counterparts – again because the companies can be viewed through the lens of apparent stigmatization. As much as we’d like to imagine that modern society is beyond base employment discrimination, the results say otherwise, and highly talented employees can often be left by the wayside for entirely emotionally derived reasons that have nothing to do with their actual qualifications.
The women who work in tech fields especially are motivated to make sure that their work is understood as among the best in the business. When you hire woman-owned technology businesses, you can be sure that you have contractors who know their business, have the strongest acumen in their field, and are in touch with the best of current technology. Women-led tech businesses are pushing out technology as far and as fast as it will go. Technology is only going to continue to advance at a blistering rate.
Be Picky About the Local Contractors You Hire
When you’re selective about the local contractors you hire, woman-owned technology businesses just make sense. Industry partners for your electrical services projects are trusted with some of the most sensitive information and infrastructure for your entire home or business. Women-owned businesses have lower rework rates and higher satisfaction. Making up just over 25% of the contracting pool, while it can take a little bit of extra work to find a woman-owned contractor, you can be sure that your work will be done right the first time.
Look into the Materials Used for Your Home Projects
Even though many homeowners wonder about the qualifications of women in roofing jobs, women in the roofing business are associated with higher quality work, better roofing materials, and improved job output in all particulars of the job. The Association of Women Contractors and National Women in Roofing are two of the most important lobbying organizations for this branch of woman-owned technology businesses. State branches of AWC organize contracting businesses while NWiR-specific lobbies for women who work in the field to improve their work prospects.
If you’re interested in supporting technology as an expanding field with many opportunities for all workers, women in tech present one of the most important and exciting opportunities for employment expansion. Currently, women in roofing represent .5% of the worker pool, but have consistently strong work levels and represent great opportunities for expansion and advancement in the next few years. The expertise of women in roofing and other technology fields is vastly underestimated.
Learn More About the Women Who Are Experts in Tech Fields
Mechanical contracting expertise is one of the fields where woman-owned technology businesses have a strong advantage over traditional men-owned contractors. The 13 percent of construction-related companies owned by women are experts in mechanical contracting, providing needed jobs in the industry and supporting other parts of the construction and contracting industries.
Women-owned mechanical contracting businesses like HVAC technicians create an ongoing support network for other businesses. Building, repairing, and ongoing maintenance of systems already in place create the right infrastructure for these businesses to support other companies as the technology workforce expands and diversifies over time.
Find Contractors Who Were Trained in Woman-Owned Schools
It’s not enough just to support the people who are already in the workforce, however, because those contractors typically come from schools rather than apprenticeships now, especially women who can find it difficult to be apprenticed in traditionally male-dominated fields. Woman-owned technology businesses include welding schools and other contractor education institutions that create new contractors.
Women who learn in these schools are a strong asset for the businesses that hire them in the first place and move on to own and operate their businesses at a higher rate than women who are apprenticed. Woman-owned technology schools push to reduce the barriers to entry for women in tech fields, creating workers who are versed in the modern skills needed for the continuing development of their fields. If you’re starting in tech, consider a school education in your field, especially in situations where you’re fighting against multiple intersections of opposition, like queer women and women of color.
Research New Technologies Pioneered by Women
One of the underestimated factors in modern technology is how many technologies were pioneered by women scientists and woman-owned technology businesses. In the 1940s, Lieutenant Commander Grace Hopper created the first compiled computer language, and that compiler, which became FORTRAN, remains one of the most used. In the paving industry, new polyaspartic flooring coverings can be installed in just hours, compared to days for traditional polyurethane and epoxy coatings, building a surface that can be ready to use the same day it’s poured.
Show Your Support to Organizations That Support Women in Tech
When you support woman-owned technology businesses, consider the public and private organizations that back them up with training, talent, and tools as well. Women-owned technology businesses often rely on microfinance and other organizational tools to get them past the startup phase, even as they’re investing in cutting-edge techniques like waterjet cutting in the fabrication industry.
The investment needed to keep these organizations going doesn’t come without donations from patrons like you. Supporting organizations that support women is a keen investment in the future and creates opportunities for women to prove themselves both in the setup phase of businesses and in ongoing education that will keep the next generations of women entering technology fields in increasing numbers.
Subscribe to Technology Websites and Magazines
Woman-owned technology businesses often publish their findings and advertisements on websites and in magazines that cover tech. Fields like the emerging path of biological insecticide technology can support new businesses with new technologies, since entering these fields can be easier by far when there’s not already an established cultural norm of male domination in the field. Technical publications can also alert potential clients to the existence of women-led companies that they might not otherwise have access to and create chances for women-owned companies to shine in the fields that they’ve created as male-dominated firms come into industries that women have proven a need for and demand for workers and start to create their presence there.
Support Local Women in Business
Some of the fastest-growing technology businesses, especially woman-owned technology businesses, are in green energy. Women are leading the way among many of the best solar companies in North America, creating good and well-paying jobs in a booming industry, installing rooftop solar, and reducing families’ carbon footprints as they do so. Modern solar, thanks to investments made by the Obama and Biden Administrations, is booming. As more jobs are created, the incentive to buy solar made and installed in the U.S.A. continues to grow, and our dependence on foreign oil decreases. American women lead the world in new solar panel installations on a per capita basis.
Purchase Clothing Made by Women
Among the first woman-owned technology businesses were weavers and seamstresses, with men making cloth and tailoring only much later in history after cities came about. Clothing is an essential technology and women have been at its forefront ever since recorded history. In modern history, work boots have been a difficult situation for women in the workplace, with many women having to choose to accept lower-order foot injuries like blisters and torn skin from skidding in boots with toe boxes shaped for men’s feet, which tend to be wider toward the toe and narrower toward the heel than women’s, rather than risk severe foot injuries like broken toes.
Creators of women’s workwear like Xena and Juno Jones in recent years have specialized in providing work boots that fit women’s feet properly. With these safety shoes and boots, women in the workforce, in fields like construction and restaurants, can count on antislip and anti-skid footwear that won’t force them to choose between major and minor foot injuries to get through their working day. These makers have led the way, forcing venerable shoemakers like Red Wing Shoes to follow their lead in providing the combination of safety and comfort that women have been demanding for decades from their workwear.
Support Women in All Business Fields
Woman-owned technology businesses are in the minority in business, but that shouldn’t stop you from seeking them out and spending money to support them. Porcelain veneers are a big source of business for woman-owned businesses when they’re one of the most requested cosmetic medical procedures for women. They are a quick way to respond to the demand for women’s appearance to be perfect, without spending thousands on plastic surgery that may cause problems down the road. Because veneers are a particular demand on women to “look” right, women-owned dental offices that install them should be your first choice when it comes to getting this form of cosmetic work done.
Medical technology continues to be spearheaded by women’s efforts, as women in medical businesses keep pushing further into the field with creative interpretations of existing technology that generate new ways to look at the same fields. These differences create significant changes in people’s lives.
Women in technology were once controversial. It could be some time before the ratio is equalized between women-owned and men-owned businesses, but women in technology now are increasingly looking at the many ways to make positive inroads into even the most typically male-dominated industries. Construction and home contracting companies have made many changes in the field over the last few decades, and more are coming as everything promises to change in the next few.
Creating access for woman-owned technology businesses to enter the market and compete successfully with men in their respective fields is a prospect that faces daunting levels of social inertia to overcome the existing barriers to entry. It’s also highly worthwhile, because women in these fields of business bring excellence, new ideas, and strong skill sets to the table, as well as making up half of the available workforce.
During the Second World War, “Rosie the Riveter” and her sisters became the face of the American war effort. The U.S. did this by tapping into the potential of women to do complex, technical work. This potential then went unrealized in the first two decades after the war. Making the same mistakes now can be avoided.