A Girl Thing

May 12, 2007 — -- Ashley Anderson recently asked her boss for a raise.

It would have been an awkward conversation for anyone in any workplace, but there was another factor adding to the tension: Anderson's employer is her grandmother.

"I said, 'I do a lot of work here,'" said Anderson, recounting the meeting. "She was looking at me and had her arms crossed, and I said, 'Grandma, don't look at me like that!'"

For Anderson's grandmother, Marilyn Jones, such interactions are nothing new. Jones runs Consolidated Printing Co. in Chicago, which specializes in ecofriendly printing services, and her vice president is her daughter Kathy, Anderson's mother.

"[Kathy] was always helping in the business as she was growing up. … She started helping out during busy times, and the busy times became full time, and it just happened," said Jones, whose mother loaned her the money to start her business in 1973. "She's reliable, absolutely reliable. You know this person has the passion that you do, the same loyalty to the company and the same dedication."

That a business is a family affair is nothing new. Mom-and-pop shops are common, and so are father-son partnerships. But increasingly, mother-daughter enterprises are helping shape the entrepreneurial landscape, including in traditionally male-dominated industries.

"In the past 20 years, we've seen a generation [of female business owners] develop, and they are mothers with daughters who are now taking over those businesses or working with them to eventually take over," said Hedy Ratner, co-president of the Women's Business Development Center.

The Center for Women's Business Research reports nearly half of all privately held companies in the United States are now women-owned, and the group recently conducted a survey that shows 37 percent of female entrepreneurs plan to pass their businesses on to a daughter, compared to 19 percent of male business owners who said the same.

"Women are much more likely to continue the opportunity for women to be in business ownership," said the center's executive director, Sharon Hadary. "But also, one out of every five men business owners … are beginning to look and say, 'It's viable for me to make my daughter my heir apparent.'"