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for power women
Question: Has this title's time come and gone?
By Jeff Bercovici
Ideally, talent and ambition are the only qualities that should matter in a free enterprise system.
Most business magazines, however, don’t reflect an ideal. They reflect reality, which is that men continue to hold most of the power in the business world.
"Let's face it: Entrepreneur's male-driven. So is Inc.," says Keli Swenson, founder of the new magazine Female Entrepreneur, speaking of two of the leading small-business publications. "The stories they run are for the most part by males and about males."
That will most emphatically not be the case with Female Entrepreneur, which debuts later this month.
The new bimonthly has 40,000 subscribers, and another 60,000 copies will be on sale at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores.
Female Entrepreneur’s arrival comes less than 18 months after the demise of another magazine of similar mission, Working Woman.
Although its sister title, Working Mother, continues to publish, to some the death of Working Woman seemed to mark the end of the era when women were forced to consider themselves second-class citizens in an environment dominated by men.
No one doubts that women still face unique challenges to their advancement in the business world. But are they anywhere near as pressing as they were in 1976, when Working Woman was founded?
Swenson, who owned her first company at the age of 25 and worked as a public relations consultant prior to getting involved with Female Entrepreneur, makes the case that they are.
"When you're dealing with a good old boy, a high-powered middle-aged man, if you’re a female entrepreneur you're probably not going to get much respect from him," says Swenson.
However much conditions may have improved for women in the business world over the past few decades, a certain level of prejudice remains, she says.
"Most men would just rather do business with other men, unless it's administrative work, assistant's work."
Naturally, some of Female Entrepreneur's articles will deal with workplace discrimination. The first issue will feature a primer on illegal job interview questions.
Other topics covered in the debut issue will include motivational speaking, internet etiquette and the pros and cons of listing one's web site on Google. There will also be an article by business writer Marcia Rosen entitled “The Orgasm Syndrome: From boardroom to office, why women tend to fake it.”
Much of the magazine’s editorial will not be written just for female readers, notes Swenson.
"I'm not going 100 percent feminist on this," she says. "There are going to be men who pick up the magazine, and I don't want them to throw it down."
Swenson has published newsletters in the past, but Female Entrepreneur marks the first time she has edited a magazine. She says her partners decided that it was more important to have an editor with a background in business than in business journalism.
"More than anything, my experience being a female entrepreneur was the priority."
About 50 companies will run ads in the first issue. Most are small, but Office Depot is a charter advertiser, and eBay will appear in the second issue.
One problem Female Entrepreneur faces going forward is a legal challenge from Entrepreneur Media Inc., which publishes Entrepreneur magazine.
Swenson says she has been contacted by EMI's lawyers, who say the new magazine’s name is an infringement on EMI’s trademark. In a similar dispute between EMI and EntrepreneurPR, a public relations firm that serves small businesses, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled last year that the “Entrepreneur” mark is entitled to only limited protection.
January 8, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life
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