Women Eutrepranuers - The Next Step :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚   During the 1990's, American women have made unprecedented moves away from corporate business into the home-based work world. Seeking a way to incorporate their career and personal interests with family responsibilities, they are tearing down the stereotype of Supermom and replacing it with Mompreneur, a new image that allows for more creativity, flexibility, and personal expression. The growth of home-based women-owned businesses has been phenomenal, especially when the traditional role of women is taken into consideration. Until the 1950's (excluding a period during the early 1940's when women took up positions in the workforce vacated by men fighting in World War II) America still embraced the ideal woman as a Donna Reeves stereotype (Scott 274). A woman was meant to stay at home and attend to her domestic duties, nurture her children, and support her husband in all things -- all done with grace, style, and no murmur of discontent (Behr and Lazar 18-19)!    Girls born during the 1950's grew up in a transitional world. Older women were beginning to make inroads in the work world, but there was as yet no emphasis on goal- setting, no encouragement to take up a career. Neither was there discouragement, but the lack of parental and teacher guidance created a generation of lost women, many of whom now face their midlife years with little or no idea of what to do with themselves.    The generation that followed these lost women was more fortunate. Opportunities in the work force were opening up, and schools were beginning the slow process of restructuring and rethinking needed to encourage young women to seek career options. Many of these young women embraced this new opportunity, creating a generation of over-achievers who sought to carve out a place for themselves as equals in the corporate world. These women spawned the term Supermom and, in doing so, created an entirely new set of issues for women to face.    Foremost among these issues was burnout. A majority of typical Supermoms were part of two-income families where both husband and wife worked long hours. In the words of one Maryland woman who found herself with all the domestic duties in addition to her full-time career: "Something had to give. I thought, 'This is not right. I'm cheating someone and I'm probably cheating everyone,' ... I needed to be home" (Yoest 1).