Women Own a Larger Slice of American Corporations : Trends: The group employs 6.5 million people, more than the Fortune 500 companies combined.
The number of American companies owned or controlled by women has grown to the point where they now employ more people than do all the Fortune 500 companies, according to a magazine report on women in business.
In its May issue, Working Woman magazine released its second annual list of leading women business owners, which profiles 50 women who have started, taken over or inherited companies. Their companies are ranked by annual revenue.
The magazine said, in the issue going on sale at newsstands Tuesday, that the number of women-owned businesses has grown at least 20% in the past year to more than 6.5 million. Working Woman cited figures from the National Foundation for Women Business Owners, which cooperated in compiling the list.
The foundation estimates that payrolls at women-owned businesses grew to more than 12 million people in 1992, according to the magazine. By contrast, companies included in Fortune magazine’s ranking of the nation’s 500 largest industrial companies employed about 11.7 million last year, according to the foundation.
Three of the women on the list run companies with revenue exceeding $1 billion.
Heading the list is Pat Moran, president of JM Family Enterprises, whose auto dealership empire, based in Deerfield Beach, Fla., includes the largest distributor of Toyota cars, trucks and forklifts. Moran last year took charge of the company her father founded in 1968. Its 1992 sales came to $2.4 billion.
The No. 2 spot is occupied by Marian Ilitch, secretary-treasurer of Little Caesar Enterprises, which runs a 4,500-store pizza carryout chain. The Detroit-based company, which Ilitch founded with her husband in 1959, had 1992 sales of $2.16 billion.
The third woman on the list is heiress Joyce Raley Teel, who is co-chair with her husband of the Raley’s supermarket chain that her late father headed.
The West Coast food retailer, based in Sacramento, had sales last year of $1.9 billion.
Various fields are represented in Working Woman’s ranking. Cosmetics, diet, fashion and retailing, which historically have attracted women, are well represented. Internationally known clothing designer Donna Karan, who is chief executive of her company, ranks 17th, and Jenny Craig, vice chair of the weight-loss company that bears her name, ranks ninth.
The biggest single category after fashion and retailing is heavy industry. Among those who made the list are women overseeing industrial companies engaged in navigational guidance systems, pork packaging, steel manufacturing, lumberyards and tire distribution.
The businesswoman in the sixth position is credited by the magazine as being the first woman ever to capture a company in a hostile takeover and take it public. Linda Wachner is president, chair and CEO of Warnaco Group, the intimate-apparel maker that markets the Warner’s and Olga bra lines, among others.
