Resources For Women Entrepreneurs

Anybody who thinks of business as a man's world is living in the wrong century. The fact is, by a wide margin, most entrepreneurs these days are women. Indeed, when it comes to starting new businesses in the United States, women currently outnumber men 2 to 1.

Reflecting on this, there is no end of resources aimed at smoothing the path for women entrepreneurs. One of the best is a government outfit called Women Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century, or Women-21 for short. A partnership of the SBA and the U.S. Department of Labor, Women-21 has an excellent web site, http://www.women-21.gov/, that accurately describes itself as "a premier one-stop federal resource for targeted information, registration for online programs, and networking opportunities to help women entrepreneurs navigate the ever-changing business world."

Women-21 boasts a long lost of partners, many of them nonprofit, offering help for women interested in starting new businesses. I've listed a few of them below. But if you want to get a real sense of the array of resources available to women entrepreneurs, visit the Women-21 web site.

• The Association of Women's Business Centers (http://awbc.org). A national nonprofit organization representing women business owners, the AWBC provides educational, training, technical assistance, mentoring, development, and financing.
• Black Women Enterprises. Dedicated to advancing the interests of Black women business owners (though everyone is welcome to join), BWE provides educational, networking, and technical resources for its members.
• eWomen Network.com. An invaluable networking resource, eWomenNetwork has a searchable online directory that boasts the world's largest photographic profile database of female business owners and corporate professionals. With more than 10,000 members and 80 U.S. and Canadian chapters, eWomenNetwork provides women entrepreneurs with a steady stream of new contact and business-development opportunities as well as cost-effective ways to promote themselves and their businesses.
• MANA, A National Latina Organization (http://www.hermana.org/). MANA is a nonprofit advocacy organization that promotes Latin women in business and community service.
• National Association of Women Business Owner (http://www.nawbo.org/). With more than 8,000 members in more than 80 chapters around the country, NAWBO calls itself "the voice of America's women-owned businesses." In addition to providing unparalleled networking possibilities, NAWBO lobbies vigorously on economic and public policy issues affecting women business owners.
• National Women Business Owners Corporation (http://www.nwboc.org/). The NWBOC, a sister of the National Association of Women Business Owners and the Center for Women's Business Research, runs a national certification program for women-owned and -controlled businesses that can help them compete for corporate and government contracts. More than 100 private and public agencies now accept NWBOC certification.

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