Revised Research Questions

What are the primary reasons for the discrepancies in successes of male versus female-run small businesses? Does gender-based discrimination exist with respect to entrepreneurship, and how does this manifest with respect to the procurement of resources that make financial successes possible? How do women operate differently from men in navigating the private sector of our capitalist system, and how do these differences preclude or advance their potential successes?

Journal Review.

I acknowledge up front that there are a few holes in this, as the beautiful, open access, peer-reviewed journal I had picked out that had all of its ducks in a row and had been stated on another site to allow undergrad research in fact only accepted graduate level and above and I didn't find that out until close to the last minute, then had to work with a number of librarians to find alternatives, so there are a few questions I missed that I will send to the editor and post an update accordingly. I found a lot of this information through joining the manuscript submission website and using my deductive reasoning skills on what was and wasn't required, based on the questions asked in the required fields, et cetera.

1) Title: Women's Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal, published by the Taylor & Francis Group, specifically Routledge, and based in the Claremont Graduate University.

2) The journal was founded by Wendy Martin, currently a Professor of American Literature and American Studies Associate Provost, as well as the Director of the Transdisciplinary Studies Program at Claremont Graduate University, in 1972, and she is currently its primary editor. Description from the website: "Women's Studies provides a forum for the presentation of scholarship and criticism about women in the fields of literature, history, art, sociology, law, political science, economics, anthropology and the sciences. It also publishes poetry, film and book reviews." (Taylor & Francis Group) Looking over the early issues, it seems to have its roots specifically in the analysis of women writers, though that is hardly its only emphasis. There are twenty-one editors representing nine different disciplines on the review board.

3) There are eight issues per year. There are both electronic and print copies for subscribers. I called the editor's office and the secretary told me they do accept undergraduate research papers for article submissions, as this was unclear on the website. The journal publishes topics specific to the aforementioned disciplines, with no overriding theme specific to each issue, though there was recently an issue dedicated solely to the "Woman Art Collector." Because the journal is by subscription only, I was unable to read through multiple issues, but I accessed the sample copy and there was a strong emphasis on identitarian issues ("Black Women, Beauty, and Hair as a Matter of Being") and literary analysis (an article on an autobiographer and an analysis of transgressive women's writings) in the articles in that particular issue. Because I couldn't read entire issues, I referred to the table of contents in a few issues from this year to further feel out what they publish, and that yielded a few articles that seem closely related to a few of our class's topics, among them "Motherhood, Stereotypes, and South Park," and going back a couple of years, "Variations in Values: A Narrowing Gap Between Male and Female Employees in a Singaporean Firm in Southeast Asia?" As mentioned above, the editor is Wendy Martin, an English professor at Claremont Graduate University in California, and the publishing house is British. They don't host a conference.

4) This is a preeminent journal in the field, one of the only instances I found that all of our disciplines are equally represented. Essentially, this would be instance in which we would aim high. Given the expense of the journal and its content, this is a highly academic journal, aimed towards professors, librarians, and scholars.

5) All scholars, emerging or otherwise, with relevant papers, reviews, and articles, et cetera may submit. Resubmission is allowed, and there is a special field to indicate whether or not it's been submitted multiple times. The maximum length of submissions is twenty-five pages, and it seems the average is between fifteen and that maximum. There is no suggested length. It employs MLA, and there is an online submission drop box for all manuscripts. Your work can be submitted in whatever format necessary, but all of the contents, including pictures, if they are used, will be consolidated into a .pdf file for peer review. The abstract must not exceed two hundred words, one hundred recommended, and there is a space for a cover letter. The Works Cited must be numbered in consecutive Arabic numerals. Submissions must be original and unpublished. You do not need to be a member to publish, but you obviously need an account with the manuscript submission website.

Works Cited

"Taylor & Francis Journals: Welcome." Women's Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal. Taylor & Francis, 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. <http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=0049-7878&linktype=1>.

"Women's Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal." Women's Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal. Taylor & Francis. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g917928090>.

"Women's Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal." Women's Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal. Taylor & Francis. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g794613610>.

Research Questions:

I'm hoping that despite that I missed the lecture on this and didn't get notes that I'll structure these questions at least somewhat close to the structure you're looking for, so here goes.

Questions:
What are the primary reasons for the discrepancies in successes of male versus female-run small businesses? How does gender-based discrimination manifest itself with respect to the procurement of resources that make financial successes possible? How do women operate differently from men in navigating the private sector of our capitalist system, and how do these differences preclude or advance their potential successes?

Service Learning Proposal.

Service Learning Proposal for Animal Safehouse of Brevard

By: Patricia Parker

September 23, 2010

Meredith Tweed

WST 4002

Community Partner Profile:

Community Partner: Animal Safehouse of Brevard
Community Partner Contact: (407) 620-6865, http://www.animalsafehousebrevard.org/

Community Partner Mission Statement: “Our objective is to form a network of foster families to provide homes for pets of domestic violence survivors until they can be reunited in a safe living environment. We provide all food, supplies, vet care, and other essentials throughout their stay with us. We also help women reunite with their animals post-shelter by assisting with pet deposits and transport." (ASHB)

Political and/or Social Basis for Organization: "According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (www.ncadv.org), there were 113,123 reported cases of domestic violence and 180 domestic-violence related homicides in Florida in 2008. Women and children should not have to leave their pet(s) behind." (ASHB)

The Proposal

Memorandum

TO: Meredith L. Tweed

FROM: Patricia Parker

DATE: September 24, 2010

RE: Proposal to Write a Feasibility Report for a Service Learning Project

The following is a proposal to outline the needs, rationale and feasibility for a service learning project to benefit Animal Safehouse of Brevard. The following proposal contains background on the need for and benefits of a ASHB project, an outline of the work I plan to do, the rationale for its inclusion in WST 4002, and a scheduled timeline. This proposal may need to be revised after beginning the project and must be flexible to meet the needs of the Service Learning project and the community partner.

Problem:

Animal Safehouse of Brevard is a relatively new nonprofit organization that has yet to establish itself in many ways, but especially financially. Often, the resources needed for animal care in the wake of receiving a new charge just aren't there, in which case, Leandra, like many business proprietors, is forced to pull from her own pocket to meet her organization's needs. This business model can only be effective for so long, before the financial and the physical toll become too much for proprietors. The mechanics of this problem, among others, in the process of establishing a business as a woman, are my primary interests, and while I can't fix the entire problem, I can certainly offer a different perspective than most other service learning students, as my emphasis is focused on one of the most significant roadblocks Animal Safehouse is encountering while endeavoring to empower women.

Plan Proposal:

I will be working with Leandra in fundraising for the organization, as well as shadowing in its basic managerial and financial aspects. This is a very small scale organization, both in person power and resources, despite that it addresses an issue that is usually ignored or underrepresented in terms of solutionary action. In similar situations, this often leads to dishearteningly severe declines in operational viability, and can preclude progress for women to establish themselves as contributing members of their communities. My work will focus only on how to prevent this from happening to Animal Safehouse, by taking into my charge the discrepancies in financial resources, while analyzing what factors can contribute to the alarming inconsistencies in the success rates of male versus female run businesses.

Rationale for Women's Studies:
My research is more referential of small businesses (profit-based) owned by women and the issues involved in the startup process and why these problems exist, but the financial problems in running this organization are very similar. The only organizational differences is that it hinges on donations or fundraising, rather than profit. I want to come to some understanding of the difficulties of running an organization, any organization, that hinges on financial resources, while being a woman operating in a unabashedly capitalistic, self-serving society. There are very interesting implications to doing this with a nonprofit, as the act of charitable activism is counterintuitive to the nature of how we perceive our world economically, yet depends on the same resources in order to survive. The discrepancy in the success rates of female versus male-run businesses is astronomical, and I'm curious as to why this is the case. As a social constructionist, I'm not one to say that women are inherently less able to handle the stresses of the financial sector, but the interplay of certain outside factors, especially discouragement from applying for the credit which will make the endeavor initially possible, needs to be isolated and understood, so that women aspiring to be financially successful, independent of any cosigner, can make educated decisions regarding the viability of their projects. Pulling from the article, "Women's Studies, Neoliberalism, and the Paradox of the Political," which we've read recently, one potential problem I can isolate regarding women as operators in a capitalist society, especially concerning small businesses, is that "the rise of corporate power is relative to the increasing disenfranchisement of flexible laboring bodies." (Rubin 248) While this is not directly relevant to my field research, it does give me a perspective from which to base my thoughts when attempting to aid in the financial successes of ASH.

Action:
I have been emailing Abigail Malick, the Service Learning Coordinator, and Leandra about my goals for this project and what they need done, beyond the more traditional service learning suggestions (transport, cleaning, animal interaction, fostering), and it seems that there are a lot of opportunities for fundraising and tabling for education and opening up dialogue. Their financial resources are currently very depleted and I plan to be taking a very active role in learning about that aspect of the business, so my activity will reflect this.

Timeline: 

October 10- Orlando Pride Fest Orlando

October 23- Veg Fest Orlando

October 30- Suntree Fall Festival

Works Cited

Animal Safehouse of Brevard. 2010. Animal Safehouse of Brevard. 24 September 2010.

Beins, Angela and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, eds. Women’s Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005.

Word Count: 944

Library Research Module

1) I didn't know where to start with women who theorize on my topic, so I went straight into database searches for keywords. I began with simply "women business" and yielded thousands of results. Here are bullet pointed ways I used the subject topics to yield hyperlinked keywords. Each dropped bullet represents a subtopic of a subtopic, or in the case of the commas, multiple subtopics.

• women owned business enterprises
• federal aide to women owned business operations
• government accountability, government lending
• business education
• career development
• economic aspects
• economic conditions
• finance

Next, I got more specific, querying "women small business," and yielded only "women executives" as a relevant subtopic. The following results are similar, with the arrow indicating "yield," or rather, another subtopic.

• Women capitalism → patriarchy → government policy
• Women leadership → women executives
• Women labor → Sexual division of labor → businesswomen, pay equity, sex roles in the work environment, international business enterprises, feminist economics

2) I began with this question in the journal databases, starting in the business college, with a specific emphasis in business, and went to the LexisNexis Statistical Insight Journal and searched "women business." It was a goldmine. I found a research study based on statistics collected from the Survey of Small Business Finances entitled "Gender and the Availability of Credit to Privately Held Firms: Evidence from the Surveys of Small Business Finances." It's purely quantitative research that posits exactly in the direction I wanted to take my research, but stresses specifically that women are not barred from obtaining credit, but rather discouraged from applying in the first place and charged greater interest rates, despite being more likely to be required to offer collateral. It also examines the general intersectional differences in identity that differ between male and female small business owners, with an emphasis on the education gap, which favors men. The abstract was basically the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Anyway, more on LexisNexis: I also found a research document entitled "Equality for Women: Where Do We Stand on Millenium Development Goal 3?" This is further qualitative research that I've yet to review, but am excited to delve into, though it represents women on a global scale and isn't particular to just business ownership, so I'm unsure of its direct application.

Cole, Rebel A., and Hamid Mehran. "Gender and the Availability of Credit to Privately Held Firms:   Evidence from the Surveys of Small Business Finances." LexisNexis Statistical. Web. 9 Sept. 2010.

Buvinic, Mayra, Andrew R. Morrison, A. Waafas Ofosu-Amaah, and Mirja Sjöblom, eds. "Equality for            Women: Where Do We Stand on Millenium Development Goal 3?" LexisNexis Statistical. Web. 9 Sept.  2010.

Next, I became curious about the sociological implications of my topic, so I searched the sociology journal databases and checked out Contemporary Women's Issues. A lot of these results were in the form of extremely brief newsletters, outlining general statistics, such as how women-owned businesses are on the rise, with the most quickly growing examples listed (related fact: the top five metro areas are all cities in Florida). Additionally, I read a newsletter entitled "Women business owners rank concerns" and to my surprise, it speaks only of financial issues on a macro scale, not an individual basis. However, while these are statistically based, it's in the form of surveys, rather than analysis of preexisting data. This distinction was quite surprising to me, and even more than that, I found quite a few articles about finance as it exists in other countries, as analyzed by their own citizens or American researchers. Most of the LexisNexis information is compiled either by the US government or in the case of the principal article mentioned above, the Federal Reserve Bank. 


Basically, my greatest surprise was that even in sociological research, the truncated reports produced completely lacked voice, and instead reported blankly on statistics. I have yet to find a VOICE for what I'm trying to research and write about, and given my previous background and area of study, this is quite disconcerting. However, after further research, I realized that the brevity and lack of commentary is not isolated to sociology, as the Worldwide Political Science Abstracts database offered much more substantial articles, though the only one that related to my research was part of a dissertation compilation that I'm not sure we have any volumes of dating past 1980 entitled "Government contracts: A study of minority small business owners' and administrators' strategies for success," published this year. Furthermore, these journals are pointing me in a new direction; perhaps an analysis of microcredit in developing nations would be more valuable? At this point, I'm so deep in the research that I am only posing this because I am discouraged by the lack of readily accessible commentary on this issue in the domestic sphere, although perhaps searching for it will yield more original commentary? In an effort to narrow it to the domestic, I even tried "women business America" as a search term on the CWI database, and yielded zero results.


Anyway, I'm getting distracted. On to WorldCat. For whatever reason, the principal search results for articles utilizing the search terms "women" and "business" were all in Slovenian. There were five thousand+ internet resources under these search terms, and I looked at pages upon pages and didn't find any that were relevant without narrowing it down further than I had to using the topic specific databases. However, when narrowed to "women," "business," and "government loans," I yielded similar results to my LexisNexis results, including two early nineties sources from the U.S. Small Business Administration, concerning "the facts about women-owned small businesses." This overlap is not something I saw in the sociology database.


3) As I mentioned before, the sociological sources were primarily newsletters, and as such, were not very informative beyond unimpressive statistics, or could have been quite informative, in the case of the aforementioned dissertation, but were out of my immediately available reach. My preference for this research has become research journals and dissertations, but more than that, I need to find where solid, interesting theorizations begin, with a seminal scholar in the field, which will happen after I get in touch with professors more directly related to my field of interest. However, business itself is obviously quantitative and generally not based in theory, and other than Marxist feminism and labor issues, I struggle to find where women's studies would intersect. If anything, the initial research process has only made me unsure of the viability of my topic as it stands and I am seriously considering another financially motivated topic. As for comparison, the level of detail included in the sociology database I referred to was, in a word, inadequate, though I'm very excited to go back to the library on Monday to look into that Political Science dissertation abstract further. For initial data, it seems that my best bet is the statistics compiled by the government in research reports on LexisNexis. Basically, I've researched for well over nine hours of active time and I have yielded very little, so I'd love help redirecting myself because honestly, the inadequacy of my results does not reflect a lack of effort.

Invention Module

1) Ideas:

Well, as I've previously mentioned, I'd like my focus to emphasize women and entrepreneurship, but another idea I've batted around lately is how linguistics often reinforces the gender binary and cultural constructions of gender. Example: in Spanish, the word "kitchen" is female, and most electronics are male. The gendering of language, to me, is quite problematic and dated, but perhaps my sensibilities are just too liberal to understand the utility of it. Additionally, I was listening to NPR the other day and there was an interview with a linguist about constructed languages through the ages and one she mentioned specifically was Láadan, a language created by American science fiction writer Suzette Haden Elgin in 1982 to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It focuses specifically on feminizing communication to counter its male-centered limitations. While I don't encourage this sort of default gender separatism, it fit perfectly with what I had already been considering concerning transcultural linguistics. I don't PLAN to make this my topic, but since we're already listing our ideas, I thought I would mention it.

2) Research:

Back to my original plan: I think my emphasis should be specifically in government grants because I'll most likely be working with Leandra's nonprofit for my field research, and also, because it's easier to quantify the statistical inconsistencies in a macro scheme than working within a specific community. Also, it will better inform my personal interests, as I have no intention of using this information while living even remotely close to Florida. Professor Tweed mentioned also the possibilities for perspectives involving women in a capitalist society, and I also believe this would be highly valuable. With this level of specificity and ability to act as a direct corollary to my original, rather vague idea, I don't feel the need to list other possibilities, unless further specificity is requested.

3) Previous paper ideas:

As I've mentioned, I just changed my major from English Literature, and I highly doubt that my papers on German Enlightenment thinkers, Tolstoy, and the like would relate in the least, though I wish they would. I almost considered returning to my most immediate comfort zone and doing a deconstruction of some of the horrible women in Shakespearean plays and their inexplicable cultural glorification (read: Cleopatra, whom I absolutely abhor), but I thought working completely outside of what is familiar to me would be a more challenging and ultimately rewarding academic experience.

Skipping straight to eight: research journals

I'm struggling to find where my research would fit because it combines the quantitative with what is obviously qualitative, and only strictly fits into the Women's Studies discipline and nowhere else. The only possible journal, beyond the UCF URJ, that I can come up with is Gender & Society, but obviously, for now, this seems rather lofty, though this can be reevaluated when I consider if I'm going to turn this into a thesis project.