A female business owner. Photo credit: UN Women, Joe Saade, via flickr.com
Just a third of women-owned businesses have returned to pre-pandemic levels of operations, as compared to almost half of their male counterparts, according to research by an equity advocate.
The study, by San Diego’s Kim Center for Social Balance, set out to identify issues facing women in business, including how COVID affected their progress. To do so, the center surveyed 490 San Diego business owners and executives during May and June of 2021.
Questions, posed in English, Spanish and Korean, focused not only on COVID-19 issues, but also on other topics regarding equity and access.
The researchers concluded that “crises like COVID particularly exacerbate systemic inequities that hamstring women entrepreneurs from fully innovating and growing.”
For instance, they found that 25% of female business owners failed to tap…
