Janice Schakowsky: “the good news in our economy today is the booming sector of women-owned businesses. We are seeing a dramatic increase.…”

“the good news in our economy today is the booming sector of women-owned businesses. We are seeing a dramatic increase. Let me give you a couple of numbers from the State of Illinois, my State. As of 1996, there were nearly 337,000 women-owned businesses in Illinois employing nearly 950,000, almost a million people, and generating $119.8 billion in sales. During the period of 1987 and 1996, the National Federation of Women-Owned Businesses estimates that the number of women-owned firms in Illinois has increased by 75 percent, and that employment has grown by 201 percent and sales have risen 252 percent, a pretty good record. In Chicago, we have the Women's Business Development Center, an organization that I have worked with for many years and watched the kind of nurturing they do of women-owned businesses. They provide counseling, entrepreneurial training, financial assistance, loan packaging, certification of women business enterprises, procurement assistance at the State and local and Federal levels and they also do advocacy on women's economic empowerment. The majority of the clients of the Women's Business Development Center are low income women. Fifty-three percent are women of color and much of their work helps women with self-employment and microenterprise development, and they also provide assistance to women who have formerly been on welfare. So we are saying that they are providing women the ladder of economic opportunity.”