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In 1977, 20,000 women came together at the National Women’s Conference in Houston Texas and drafted The National Plan of Action.  It is a call to action on twenty-six social issues that affect women, including battered women, child abuse, child care, disabilities, education, minority women, reproductive freedom and sexual preference.

In 2007, co-authors LaLa Wu and Kate Collier wrote The National Action Plan: Then and Now. The report compares statistical changes between 1977 and 2007 for each issue identified in the original plan. Although this data could be construed as outdated five years later, I think we can all safely assume, based the recessionary cycle that threw us into a tailspin in 2008, it is highly unlikely the percentages have increased dramatically since the report was written. Because it covers a thirty year period that spans what I believe was the most crucial period in the women’s movement, and the time frame when I was active in the workforce, I found it invaluable for its insights into the progress we did or didn’t make.

Overall, the report captures a decline in social injustices affecting women, as laws have been enacted to protect women’s rights and afford them opportunities in both the workplace and the home.  You can read the entire report at http://www.abzuginstitute.org/NationalPlanofAction_ThenandNow-Final.pdf.  The following is a sampling from the report:

• In 1976, nearly half of the children in the U.S. – more than 28 million under 18 – had mothers working outside the home, and 31 percent of American women with infant children were in the workforce. In 2004, 55 percent of American women with infant children were in the workforce.
• In spite of proven hazards of contraceptive pill and the IUD, only two percent of the money spent on research at the National Institutes of Health has been earmarked for research on human reproduction in recent years. In 2006, the NIH funded contraception/reproduction research at $335 million, and women’s health research at approximately $3.5 billion.
• In 1977, ABC aired a report on domestic violence citing only 30 shelters in the 50 states. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence was formally organized in January 1978. As of this report, there are over 2,000 shelter and service programs.
• In 1976, women who worked, full-time, year-round, earned on average 60 percent of what male workers earned.  In 2004, women who worked full-time, year-round, earned 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned.
• In 1972, women owned 4.6 percent of all American businesses.  In 2002, the number rose to  28.3 percent.
• In 1976, the Small Business Administration gave 11 percent of its business loans to under 3,000 women-owned businesses (0.75 percent of all women-owned businesses). In 2003, the SBA gave 20.5 percent of its 81,446 business loans and equity to 16,721 women-owned businesses (appx. .025 percent of all women-owned business owners). This equated to 2.4 billion dollars of the 16.9 billion dollars loaned.

One statistic stands out for me.  Women owned businesses grew exponentially between 1977 and 2003.  Based on the statistics provided above, women owned 400,000 businesses in 1977 and they owned 6,688,400 businesses in 2003.  Although they received a very small percentage of the SBA funds allocated during this time, women were resourceful enough to fund and operate the majority of those businesses on their own.

Curious to see how women are faring in business during the recession, I found an article in Forbes Magazine – Women-Owned Business: America’s New Job Creation Engine http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/12/small-business-job-market-forbes-woman-entrepreneurs-economic-growth.html.  The article, written in 2012, cited a recent study by The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute, that estimates women-owned businesses will create at least 5 million of the 15.3 million jobs projected by the Bureau of Labor by 2018.

These statistics are cultivated from data that reveals a faster rate of grown in women-owned business, due in part to a higher rate of college graduation for women and a higher rate of growth in predominantly female industries. The report also notes that more women-owned businesses are self funded than male-owned business and therefore don’t have to rely on bank financing when business lending is down.