Portland Ranks Poorly for Women Owned Businesses

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

GOLocalPDX Business Team

A new report on women owned businesses finds that Portland is one of the worst cities in the country. The data from America Express OPEN's new report ranks Portland in the bottom ten cities in the country out of 100.

In the macro, the report found that "more than 9.4 million women-owned businesses currently operate in the U.S. Combined, those firms account for nearly a third of all privately held companies, pull in annual revenues to the tune of $1.5 trillion and provide jobs to roughly eight million workers."

In addition, women owned businesses are the fastest-growing enterprises in the nation — increasing at a rate 1.5 times the U.S. average and topping “the growth rates of all but the largest, publicly-traded firms” in the past 18 years.

In 2014, one of the leading women's business organizations in the Portland area closed. "Since the mid-90's WEO has operated as a 100% volunteer driven organization. The organization would not exist today without the sweat, tears, and vision of the women who invested time, resources, and heart into this community." Women Entrepreneur of Oregon closed after 34 years.

One of the replacement organization WEO encouraged women to join, Portland Female Executives (PDXfX) says it "is a premier non-profit organization dedicated to the professional and personal advancement of women in business in the Portland, Oregon greater metro area."

PDXfx has yet to hold an event in 2016 and has not posted any event in 2016. And, a third organization, Oregon Womens Conference has not updated its site since 2014.

In the Northwest, Portland ranks far behind the other cities in the region:

Spokane Ranks #8

Seattle-Tacoma Ranks #56

Boise Ranks #65

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro Ranks #91

WalletHub’s analysts compared the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, across 10 key metrics indicating friendliness toward this group. The data set ranges from average revenue growth of women-owned businesses to presence of women’s business centers to industry variety for women-owned firms. Scroll down for the results, expert commentary and a detailed description of our methodology.

Source: WalletHub

Related Slideshow: Slideshow: Ten Reasons Why it Stinksto be a Straight Single Woman in Portland

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9. Facial hair

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8. No deodorant

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7. Only has a bike

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6. Won't pay for dinner

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Photo Credit: Jorge Royan under a CC-BY-SA-3.0

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5. Laid back

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Photo credit: Andrés Nieto Porras on Flickr. CC license. (Image cropped).

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4. No job

If you’ve found the only straight single man in town, chances are he doesn’t have a job. He’s in a band, or he’s building a house one brick at a time, or he’s trying to figure out how to make a sustainable organic hand craft business that mostly involves hanging out in coffee shops and bars.

Photo Credit: Ramsay MacDonland, from the Public Domain

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3. Profile let down

Judging by his Tinder profile picture, he's like a young Ryan Gosling. In real life, less gosling, more ugly duckling.

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2. Exes at yoga

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Photo Credit: Ace Images no name to credit on the site.

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1. He's a clown

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