Today's Immigrant Woman Entrepreneur

Immigrant women entrepreneurs are rapidly making their mark in the US business sector, in every region of the country and across a large range of industries. Today, immigrant women of the post-1960s wave of immigration comprise one of the fastest growing groups of business owners in the US. This article examines the rise of immigrant women entrepreneurs and profiles them as a group using data from the 2000 Decennial Census and other sources. Entrepreneurship among women is on the rise worldwide, due in part to the many microenterprise and micro-lending programs now available. This increases the likelihood that new immigrant women will arrive in the US with some entrepreneurial experience, giving them a head start. Thus there is reason to expect that the numbers of immigrant women entrepreneurs in the US will continue to rise and that their economic contributions will continue to be of benefit not only to themselves, but to the entire US economy and society.