Digital Extra

By NORA LOCKWOOD TOOHER
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

When Lois Mahoney moved to Rhode Island six years ago, she abandoned corporate life to start her own business.

A registered nurse with two decades of nursing experience, Mahoney had worked for 10 years at a Florida law firm, reviewing medical records in malpractice cases.

"When I came to Rhode Island," Mahoney says, "I thought, if I'm going to do this type of work, I'm going to do it for me."

With her son, Kenneth Mahoney, 30, who had a background in marketing, Mahoney founded New England Medical Legal Consulting, in Cranston.

Mahoney represents a growing number of women entrepreneurs.

In the past decade, the number of women-owned businesses has surged. The National Foundation for Women Business Owners estimates that there were 7.7 million businesses owned by women in 1994, accounting for an estimated $1.4 trillion in sales.

Nationwide, businesses owned by women employ 15.5 million workers.

Some women business owners, like Mahoney, have grown tired of working for other people in male-dominated industries. Their solution to the glass ceiling is to get out from under it.

Mahoney's company charges $85 an hour and spends an average 22 hours per case, summarizing medical records for lawyers and pointing out deviations in standards of care.

The company, which started in her kitchen and is now on the top floor of an office building on Elmwood Avenue in Cranston, employs two part-time and four full-time nurses.

With a nationwide clientele, the business, Mahoney says, is "doing well."

It wasn't easy.

One of her earliest problems was getting the money to start her own business. She ended up using personal funds.

"We were never able to get financing," Mahoney says. Partly because it was a new type of business and nobody had statistics on success rates, banks were reluctant to risk financing it.

"There were obstacles all along the way," she says, including gender bias in both the medical and legal professions that made it difficult for a business run and staffed by registered nurses to be taken seriously.

"The fact that we were nurses breaking into a new field put up a lot of obstacles," Mahoney says.

Jennifer A. Starr, a visiting research scholar at Wellesley College, says that other women entrepreneurs cite similar concerns.

"The biggest obstacle women say they face is being taken seriously," Starr says.

But Starr plays down gender factors.

Both in starting their own businesses and in making them successful, entrepreneurs of both sexes are more alike than different, she says, at least when it comes to motivation.

She says they both are looking for independence, challenge and autonomy.

In addition, she says, advances in technology now enable many people to start home-based businesses. Fax machines, e-mail and other technologies that weren't widely available five years ago are now common. Today there are more courses and support groups available for both male and female entrepreneurs, Starr says.

One difference, however, is that since the 1970s, there have been more educational and career opportunities for women. "Women now have the experience, the contacts, the connections," Starr says.

And most recently, corporate staff reductions have helped send businesspeople of both genders into the entrepreneurial world.

Many companies, for example, lay off executives and then turn around and subcontract them as independent business operators.

Starr is skeptical about the role of the glass ceiling. Men, she says, are as likely to be victims of corporate staff reductions, and they, too, hit barriers in a big corporation. "I really think both men and women have the experience that they're not going to get further ahead," Starr says.

But Deborah K. Holmes, director of research at Catalyst, a New York City nonprofit organization that encourages women's career development, says the glass ceiling "is still firmly in place, unfortunately."

The fact is, she says, the number of top women executives of major U.S. corporations remains miniscule.

"Basically," she says, "the situation today isn't all that different from what it was 30 years ago."

There are no women chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies, and only two women CEOs among Fortune 1000 companies.

The biggest barrier to women aiming for the top of the corporate ladder, Holmes says, remains "stereotypes about women's ability." Perceptions persist, she says, that women "are less qualified, that women are less committed to careers than men, that women aren't tough enough, or that they're too tough."

Mary Lovejoy, a vice president at Textron, in Providence, disagrees.

Hired by Textron 2 1/2 years ago, Lovejoy, 40, was appointed a vice president last summer. She heads the company's investor relations, dealing with institutional investors and Wall Street analysts.

Lovejoy says she doesn't believe the glass ceiling still exists. "I'm maybe naive still, but I feel if one performs, that the opportunities will be there."

Deborah Imondi, an assistant treasurer at Textron, says the company has made a public commitment in the last several years to encouraging women and minorities in the company.

But when it comes to hiring, she says, the company chooses candidates on the basis of ability.

"Their position is we need the right person, and we're willing to look at anyone," Imondi says.

But Imondi says there is no question that at a company such as Textron, which owns Bell Helicopter, Cessna Aircraft Co., and E-Z-Go Golf Carts, women executives remain a minority.

One reason, she says, is that there are still few women in manufacturing. And without the line experience, women have trouble coming up through the ranks as plant managers and division heads.

"I think Textron has had a disadvantage in the past," Imondi says. "We're in male-dominated businesses. I don't think there's too many young girls attracted to airplane wings, and golf carts and fasteners.

"Manufacturing is America," she says. The solution, she says, is to encourage young girls to pursue engineering and other fields related to manufacturing.

Most of the companies owned by women are, like Mahoney's, still service and retail industries, according to Starr.

Increasingly, however, women are branching into industries where women have not traditionally been active, including construction, transportation and manufacturing, the study by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners found.

For Mahoney, the penalties of being her own boss - which include 12-hour days and the initial skepticism of both the medical and legal professions - pale when compared with the satisfaction.

"It took awhile," she says, "but once you get their attention, you get their respect."

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