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Jan. 26--After 14 years as a legal secretary in Panama, Leslie Barkema knew just what she wanted to do last year when she moved to Orlando: start her own business.
After more than a decade of working 12-hour days for someone else, she said she thought, "Why can't I work for me?"
A rapidly growing number of women are thinking the same thing, according to a U.S. Census report released today -- and Florida is a leading state for women entrepreneurs.
Women-owned businesses in the Sunshine State grew 29 percent from 1997 to 2002, a faster rate than all other states except Nevada (43 percent) and Georgia (35 percent), the report found.
Nationwide, women-owned businesses grew 20 percent during the same period -- nearly twice the rate for all business start-ups.
Ana Leon y Leon of the Minority/Women Business Enterprise Alliance, a local, nonprofit business-development group, expects that trend to continue.
"Women are more determined now to start businesses," she said. "They really don't want to be dependent, and that's one way to become self-sufficient."
Nearly one in 10 of Florida's women-owned businesses was located in Metro Orlando, which had 40,270 such firms as of 2002, the census report found.
Like Barkema, many of the women Leon y Leon helps through the local alliance have no previous business experience.
Barkema, 46, got the idea for her company when she visited Orlando as a tourist and found herself scrambling for vacation supplies like lip balm, a poncho and T-shirts.
"I had to buy so many things," she said.
Barkema's Care Packs To-Go, which has a Web site at carepackstogo.com, creates care packages for tourists, college students, schoolchildren and others.
"I want to be your one-stop place for custom-assembled kits," Barkema said.
Also like Barkema, the vast majority of women-owned businesses have just one worker -- the woman entrepreneur herself. Nearly 5.6 million of the 6.5 million women-owned businesses nationwide had no employees, the report found.
Other interesting tidbits from the report:
Women-owned businesses comprised nearly 30 percent of the nonfarm businesses in the United States in 2002, and generated more than $940 billion in revenue, up 15 percent from 1997.
Nearly one in three women-owned firms provided services, such as health care, repair and maintenance. Women owned 72 percent of social-assistance businesses and just over half of nursing and residential-care facilities.
Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 38.3 percent of women-owned business revenue.
Miami-Dade was among the counties with the highest number of women-owned firms, with 88,173, after Los Angeles County, Calif. (265,919) and Cook County, Ill. (130,418).
Sara Isaac can be reached at 407-420-5564 or sisaac@orlandosentinel.com.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.
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