Vermont Women’s Fund seeks to identify 10,000 women-owned businesses by yearend

The Vermont Women's Fund is seeking data to better document women's contribution to Vermont's economy through an initiative called This Way Up: There's power in our numbers.

Up-to-date information about women-owned businesses in Vermont is hard to come by, and a statewide database currently does not exist, according to a Vermont Women’s Fund press release.

The organization announced on Jan. 25 its year-end goal of signing up 10,000 women-owned businesses.

“We were surprised in 2016 when we discovered that no one knew the breakdown of business ownership by gender,” said Meg Smith, director of the Vermont Women’s Fund. “But its importance hit home two years ago when PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) money came into the state earmarked for women and minority-owned businesses, and there was no way to find them.”

To gather this data, the initiative asks women who own businesses to take a short survey on its website thiswayupvt.com, which shows results in real-time.

Those who can be considered in the survey include every woman who generates an income on their own, whether by running a business with multiple employees, working as a solo entrepreneur or running a side hustle to supplement income.

"Women have been the backbone of Vermont’s economy for years but many of these enterprises do not keep up with their male counterparts when it comes to growth and revenues," Smith said.

According to the U.S. Census, in 2019 women earned 82 cents to every dollar earned by men.

Data from the nearly 700 women entrepreneurs surveyed by the Vermont Women's Fund show that women-led businesses contributed over $361 million in revenue to Vermont’s economy while generating 1,755 full-time and part-time jobs.

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Summer Sorg is a reporter for the Burlington Free Press. Contact her at ssorg@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont Women’s Fund seeks to create women-owned business database