Celebrate Women's History Month with the Montana Chamber of Commerce
Montana Chamber of Commerce
Leading the Montana business community through advocacy, networking and collaboration for workforce solutions.
March is Women’s History Month – a time each year to celebrate women accomplishments of the past and present and to look forward to potential for the future. Since Montana is home to an entrepreneurial, innovative spirit, it comes as no surprise that women entrepreneurs and leaders have been making serious contributions to Montana since before we became a state.?
From negotiating fur trades to homesteading, from running schoolhouses to running…less respectable houses, women in Montana have always been natural born leaders. (We’ll share these stories and more later this month!)
Speaking of leaders, we would be remiss not to mention the first woman to hold federal office in the United States was from Montana: Jeanette Rankin, who said, "Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn't make sense not to use both."
From a business perspective, numerous studies tout the significant impact of women-owned businesses and gender diversity in the workplace. Here are just two stats:
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·?????Of nearly 22,000 companies from 91 countries surveyed, organizations with women in at least 30 percent of leadership positions improved profits by 6 percentage points over competitors with fewer or no women in leadership. (Peterson Institute for International Economics)
·?????Between 2014 and 2019, the growth rate of the number of women-owned companies was?3.9% annually. This is significantly more than the growth rate of all businesses during the same time frame, which was only increased 1.7% each year. (American Express)
At the Montana Chamber of Commerce, we’re taking time this month to share some success stories from a few of our innovative and exceptional women-owned or women-led businesses, personal thoughts from our staff and board, and a few gems we dug up in the Chamber archives in recognition of past, present, and future women leaders who made – or are making - history. We hope you follow us on social media and check out our rolling blog for all the stories.?