By Karen Axelton
Will women’s entrepreneurship get an injection of energy from the Millennial generation? This article by Lindsey Pollak made me think so. Pollak studied millennial attitudes and conducted a survey of 1,000 Millennial women ages 21 to 29 across the U.S., Britain, Japan, Brazil and France.
What did the research find? First, millennial women seek independence and self-direction above all else. In fact, 96 percent of millennial women worldwide said their number-one life goal was “being independent.” Independence ranked higher than marriage, motherhood, homeownership and other traditional measures of success. And how do millennial women define success? For 87 percent of respondents, it means being able to “shape my own future.”
What better way for a woman to shape her own future than by becoming an entrepreneur? There’s no other pursuit in life that is so self-directed.
Pollak predicts this desire for independence will lead to young women starting “businesses and social ventures that solve some of society’s most pressing problems.” Millennial women feel less need to “pay their dues” before trying their hand at whatever they want to do, so rather than waiting or marking time in a corporate role, perhaps they’ll be more likely to launch straight into entrepreneurship.
