Many small businesses are owned by women, and women entrepreneurs have notoriously faced hardships in gaining access to capital, from lack of information and resources and local and state government assistance to facing cultural biases from investors. Women-owned businesses make a sizable contribution to the nation’s economy and are continuing to drive economic growth. They represent 42 percent of all businesses, employ 9.4 million workers and generate revenue of $1.9 trillion dollars. However, the revenue disparity between women-owned and all privately held businesses has increased since 1997. For every dollar that a privately held company generated, women-owned businesses generated 37 cents in 1997 and 30 cents in 2019.