In a recent opinion piece, Susan Rietano Davey portrayed women leaving corporate America to start their own businesses as taking a step backward — a fallback plan that threatens their financial futures and deprives companies of leadership pipelines. As the Founder and CEO of the Women’s Business Development Council for the last three decades, I can say with certainty: this view misses the mark.
Women are not leaving the economy. They are redefining it.
Since 2020, WBDC has witnessed a 332 percent increase in women entrepreneurs seeking our programs and services. This surge isn’t about retreat — it’s about resilience and reinvention. Women across Connecticut are launching businesses that reflect not only their professional skills but also their values: flexibility, community engagement, and economic independence.
In 2024 alone, more than 3,500 entrepreneurs engaged with WBDC, representing every background and every corner of our state. Their ventures span from cafés and wellness studios to manufacturing, professional services, and childcare — the backbone of local economies. To dismiss these women as having “fallen back” is to dismiss the vitality of Main Street Connecticut.
The narrative that entrepreneurship erodes women’s long-term financial security simply doesn’t stand up to the data. At WBDC, we don’t just count clients who walk through our doors; we follow them throughout their journeys and measure their impact.
Within one year of receiving a WBDC grant, 71 percent of businesses report increased revenues and nearly half hire new employees. WBDC clients secure millions in outside capital, expand to new locations, and enter supply chains that feed some of Connecticut’s largest industries. These outcomes aren’t about survival. They’re about scale, sustainability, and long-term wealth creation.
It is evidence that entrepreneurship, far from being a fallback plan, is a deliberate and effective pathway to economic mobility.
The idea that women entrepreneurs inevitably lose “industry influence” also misunderstands the broader impact of their work. Influence is not measured only in corporate boardrooms. It is also measured in payrolls that sustain families, in storefronts that revitalize neighborhoods, and in childcare centers that allow other parents to remain in the workforce.
Of course, we must continue to fight for pay equity, flexible work, and career advancement inside corporations. Women should never face a forced choice between family and professional growth. However, framing entrepreneurship as a loss obscures the truth: many women are not fleeing corporate America in defeat — they are choosing entrepreneurship as a proactive, empowering alternative.
It is not either/or. A thriving economy needs women at every level of corporate leadership and in the entrepreneurial space. Both fuel innovation, drive profitability, and impact the economy.
At WBDC, we see firsthand that women entrepreneurs are not walking away from opportunities. They are creating them.
Fran Pastore is CEO of the Women’s Business Development Council
