{"id":4290,"date":"2020-08-31T12:25:32","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T11:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/?p=4290"},"modified":"2020-08-31T12:25:33","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T11:25:33","slug":"women-in-business-throughout-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/women-in-business-throughout-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in business throughout history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The\nworld\u2019s largest emerging market is not China – it\u2019s women<\/em>.<\/strong> This forceful statement was made by\neconomist Sylvia Ann\nHewlett<\/a>, president and CEO of New York\u2019s Center for Talent Innovation and\nexpert on gender issues, working with government agencies and non-profit\norganisations to promote women in the workplace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Of course,\nHewlett is right. According to the GEM 2018\/19 Global\nReport (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor<\/a>), women’s Total Entrepreneurial\nActivity (TEA) rate rose again from 5.6% to 6%, and the gender gap was\nreduced for the sixth year in a row. <\/strong>This situation is especially clear in\nSpain, where nine women start businesses for every ten men, well above the\nEuropean average of just six female to ten male entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the\ndifficulties that have faced women at work throughout history, women have\nalways run businesses, rising to different challenges in each era, and with a\nwide and diverse range of entrepreneurial profiles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the\npioneers who dared to start her own business and open the way for other women\nentrepreneurs was Caterina Llull\ni Sabastida<\/a>, who in the late 15th century was able to expand the business\nshe had inherited and set up important trading relationships across the\nMediterranean. We could also mention Fermina Ordu\u00f1a<\/a>, the\nfirst Spanish woman to patent an invention, in 1865: a special carriage for\ntransporting dairy animals and selling fresh milk. And of course, Marie Curie<\/a>, a pioneer in\nthe sciences and the only woman to win two Nobel Prizes (the 1903 Physics\nprize, with her husband, and the 1911 Chemistry prize working alone). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 20th\ncentury, many Spanish women decided to run their own companies. Some of them\nwere so successful that their companies still exist, and you\u2019ve probably heard\nof them\u2026 Have you ever tasted the Christmas sweets made by Confiter\u00eda de la\nViuda? This company began in the 1920s, when Mar\u00eda\nRojas<\/a> and her husband opened a sweetshop in Toledo. When she became a\nwidow, she decided to take the helm of the business, and not only did she keep\nit going, she made it very successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And talking of\nChristmas, we can\u2019t forget Manuela\nde Pablo<\/a>. You might not know the name, but for sure you\u2019ve heard of the\nbusiness she started in 1904 in Madrid: Do\u00f1a Manolita\u2019s lottery retailer became\nan icon in the capital, and has sold more winning tickets than any in Spain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were all\ncourageous women who challenged their traditional role in the home, at a time\nin history when it was much more difficult for a woman to start a business than\nit is today. After all, as we said before, these days more women than ever are\ntaking their first steps as an entrepreneur. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some countries are more equal than others<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

However, there is still a\nlong way to go: according to a study by UN Women<\/a>\nacross 173 nations, there are still 18 countries in the world where husbands\nhave the legal right to stop their wives from working. And women still find it\nmore difficult to combine their profession with being a parent: around the\nworld, only 63 countries offer the 14 weeks of maternity leave recommended by\nthe International Labour Organisation, and less than a third of working women have\nthe right to ask for time off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, some\ncountries are making rapid progress in these areas. For example, in Sweden,\nwhich leads the world in gender equality, maternity leave can be up to 480\ndays, which mothers and fathers can split between them as they prefer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the words of the\nwinner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize and former Secretary-General of the United\nNations, Kofi Annan, “women’s equality must be a central component of any\nattempt to solve the world’s social, economic and political problems.”<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world\u2019s largest emerging market is not China – it\u2019s women. This forceful statement was made by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president and CEO of New York\u2019s Center for Talent Innovation and expert on gender issues, working with government agencies and non-profit organisations to promote women in the workplace.<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,186],"tags":[357,354,356,355],"class_list":["post-4290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alvantia-es-en","category-alvantia-2","tag-gender-equality","tag-women","tag-women-and-business","tag-women-entrepreneurs","not-single"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4292,"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290\/revisions\/4292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alvantia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}