From Manicures to the Marketplace

“Mom, what is this?” a mother hears as she places a foreign dish upon the dinner table. The year is 1955, and many women have no other place to voice their creativity than on the dinner table. Often, even small risks receive negative feedback. Pizza and ham steaks were the most exotic choices, spiritual or material, that these women could get away with.

Now, in an age where women have gained the right to vote, travel the world, determine their legal and financial futures, and receive equal education to men, some women are choosing to stay at home. But creatively.
According to an article published in the New York Times in 2006,

"A recent study by the Center for Women's Business Research in Washington found that the number of women-
owned businesses with no employees grew 18 percent from 1997 to 2004, twice the rate for all businesses without
employees. In addition, the revenue for such women-owned firms grew 66 percent, compared with 42 percent over
all."

Women have found a new purpose for the kitchen: to cook up new ways to make a profit. Not only are they finding a receptive audience for their creativity, but are making good money doing so. Now, when their children don’t like their lamb, potato, and kale stew, they package it up and sell it to someone who does.

Yet, what benefit does this present over a career out in the corporate world? Aren’t women tired of a day-to-day schedule of toil, largely alone, at home? A secure position in the modern workplace would seem to be a great alternative, providing mobility, increased social contact, and a focused working environment.

Fran Pastore, director of the Connecticut Women’s Business Development Center, reported in the New York Times article “many of the 650 to 800 women the center helped annually were abandoning the corporate world.” From what is this new generation of women escaping through going it alone?

Entrepreneur Tearsa Coates said, “Working as an engineer, I felt like I was really downstream of the decision-making process. Now, I'm doing what I want to do. I make the widget. I know why I make it and I can change it if I think it needs to be changed."

In the hierarchical modern corporate boardroom, ideas have as little chance to evolve organically as they did at the dinner table of old. Executives of major corporations, as exemplified by the Enron scandal, maintain an individualist outlook.

Owning a small business allows today’s woman to maintain her independence while holding onto the values of interpersonal connection. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent through developments in communication technology, women are returning to their basic understanding of life as relationship-driven.

It has yet to be determined whether the hierarchical or organic business model is more effective. However, in a society where information is ever-present and ever changing, the latter has found its place with a new group of women who are pioneering creative paths into the world from the comfort of home.