By Stephanie Veale, Reno Gazette-Journal

The landscape for women business owners has changed drastically since Christine Whitman became an entrepreneur 20 years ago.

In 1991, Whitman, now chief executive and president of logistics company Complemar Partners in New York, led a management buyout of the company she worked for at the time. She said women didn’t own many businesses 20 years ago because “very few women were even thinking about doing it. It wasn’t part of anyone’s expectations.

“Today, I think women assume that they can do it,” Whitman said. “There is a different attitude that girls and women are growing up with today than existed when I first started in my career.”

The number of women-owned businesses in this country has grown 50 percent since 1997 — a growth rate that’s 1.5 times the national average for businesses overall, according to U.S. Census data released in December and analyzed in a recent report from American Express OPEN. Nationally, businesses owned by women number more than 8.1 million.

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