More Texas women are owning and operating businesses.

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If you’ve been paying attention to the economy for the past few years, there’s probably one word you’ve heard occasionally: “she-session.”

It’s an informal term used to describe the way the coronavirus has disproportionately affected women. One of these fields is self-employment.

Emily Ryder Pearlmeter is a senior adviser at the Dallas Federal Reserve, and she has some new research on how female entrepreneurs are doing in the economy. Listen to the story above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity:

Texas Standard: Your research focuses mostly on women who own and run their own companies. What types of businesses are we talking about?

Therefore, women start their own businesses in industries similar to industries. So those would be industries like the healthcare sector, like education and retail and entertainment and hospitality. Fewer women than men own businesses in the financial sector or insurance.

Let’s put this in context here. In the year They found that in March 2020, there were nearly 3 million women running their own businesses—the kinds of things we just talked about. But just one month later, in April 2020, this dropped from 3 million to 2 million. Can you talk a little bit about how the pandemic has affected women’s entrepreneurship?

Absolutely. Therefore, we have seen the number of self-employed women decrease by more than one-third. And in the same period, the number of self-employed men has decreased by less than a quarter. So we see a huge disparity in the ability of women who own their own businesses to continue working. And we think a lot of that has to do with a few different things.

So it will be child care for someone. So when schools and daycares close and close, mothers—more than fathers—take on a disproportionate amount of caregiving. Therefore, the children may be less likely to continue their business during their first months at home. We also see that if women are concentrated in industries more affected by the pandemic, they may be a large part of that decline. And finally, we see that there are some financial problems that can affect women-owned firms.

So now we are three years into the pandemic. where are we Have things improved for women running businesses or are they still lagging behind?

So for women, we’re not only seeing their own business back up, but we’re seeing numbers surpassing what we saw before covid hit in January. So we see a lot of important growth in private practice. And this is true for women, and especially true for mothers. Therefore, we can note that before the epidemic, women with children were also more likely to work for their own company.

Now, what about specifically in Texas? They noted that currently 39% of all self-employed – business owners – are women. That’s clearly less than half. But are things trending in the right direction for female business owners here?

Absolutely. So we actually see more growth for self-employed women compared to men. They are more likely to grow quickly and start their own businesses. And women of color in particular are starting their own businesses at a faster rate than ever before. So we see that as a promising sign, even though they are likely to be small businesses. And that’s both in terms of having employees and also in revenue.

Do you think the pandemic has contributed to the growth we’re seeing now in terms of being able to do more work from home?

I think that’s the reason. In the year I think what we’ve seen in 2020 is that after the first few months, there’s this upheaval as people start their own businesses. Now, there was more growth in people who reported doing it out of necessity rather than having a good business idea. As a result, we think that’s driving a good portion of this growth, as women are balancing some of the household responsibilities and childcare and working remotely, and being their own boss can naturally give a little more to that. And we know that women are more likely to work part-time than men. And some of these businesses may be what we call “side hustles.” So it might not be their full-time job, but it might be something they’re growing while, you know, raising their kids or working another job.

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