No solution yet to women's glass ceiling

by Shihoko Goto, UPI Senior Business Correspondent

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 19

The U.S.  Treasury Secretary may not be a magnet for television viewers, but he is quite a hit with female executives, if big performance Tuesday is any gauge of success with the opposite sex.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post declared that Paul O'Neill was one of the dullest members of the Bush administration to appear regularly on Sunday morning talk shows.  But that did not stop women entrepreneurs taking part in a forum hosted by the Department of Labor cheering O'Neill on his comments about tax cuts and tax reform.

"I can see that the short time (the Bush administration) took to go ahead with tax reduction went down well with you all," O'Neill said, following resounding applause after discussing the government's achievement in providing tax rebates and keeping taxes low.  "We need to work to push it down even further," he added. The treasury secretary pointed out that tax cuts have allowed many smaller businesses to expand and hire more people, thus revving the U.S. economic engine.  He also called for an overhaul of the tax filing system, calling the existing required forms "far too complicated," and a hindrance to business owners who need to pore over the numbers 'unnecessarily" conic tax season, a stance later echoed by Bush.

But tax cuts and reform are not the only reason the Bush administration has the solid support of many female entrepreneurs.  Bush has appointed a record number of women Cabinet members, including the first female national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice.

O'Neill spoke on the second and final day of the women entrepreneurs forum, which was organized by the Labor Department's Office of the 21st Century Workforce created last spring.  Several hundred businesswomen gathered to take part in the forum that attracted speakers as far ranging as actress Bo Derek and President Bush.

But while similar women workers' conferences often focus on juggling professional and personal lives, such as raising a family and moving up the corporate ladder at the same time, the Labor Department's forum allotted little time to such issues.

In fact, while he is himself the father of four children with 12 grandchildren, O'Neill made no mention of the difficulties women may have in being mothers, wives and business executives all at the same time. Instead, the meetings focused more on issues concerning smaller-sized businesses, from providing health care to securing government contracts.

According to the Small Business Administration, there are more than 9 million women-owned companies that employ nearly 27 million people.  Yet, the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership estimates that while women own between one-third and one-half of all small businesses, they only receive about 5 percent of available venture capital.

For instance, Congress has required since 1994 that at least 5 percent of federal contracts be awarded to women-owned businesses, but in actual fact, only 3 percent of contracts are going to female entrepreneurs.

In his speech at the conference Tuesday, Bush emphasized the importance of establishing companies and "being your own boss," adding that the administration needs to take steps to encourage entrepreneurs to take more risks, "even though there are no guarantees (for success) in free enterprise."

He also pointed out that by owning their own companies, women were more empowered to control their professional lives, unlike working for a large corporation.

Indeed, for all the talk of female empowerment and more women at the helm of business, there are still precious few top women executives at U.S. companies.  Women make up only 3 percent of the top earners at Fortune 500 companies, with only two or three female chief executive officers at a blue-chip firm at any given time.

As a result, "a growing number of women have forgone the idea of scaling the corporate ladder in an attempt to 'break through' to the executive suite. They have decided, instead, to create their own executive suite... going around the glass ceiling as entrepreneurs," said the Public Forum Institute's President Jonathan Ortmans.