This Sunday, I opened up my New York Times, and was excited when I spied the headline “Becoming the Boss,” which appeared to be an article about women entrepreneurs starting their own businesses.
The article opened by reporting that, in New York City, more than a half million businesses are owned by women, and these businesses employ 533,437 people. The article quoted a study by the Center for Women’s Business Research which found that these businesses have brought in $93 million so far in 2008.
I read on, hoping to find some inspiring stories about women who had branched out to start their own financial services firms, law firms, and businesses in growing sectors like energy, technology, communications and health care. I was hoping to learn a thing or two about the new female movers and shakers running companies in New York City.
However, upon closer inspection, I realized that most of the “successful women business leaders” described in this article clearly fell into the dreaded “pink ghetto” of decidedly women’s work. They were from industries that are universally acknowledged to be the province of women, and the kind of jobs that high achieving men would more than willingly cede entirely to the other gender.
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