A Letter From the Publisher: Jul. 4, 1988

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Appearing on a television talk show recently, Betty Friedan mentioned in passing that women are opening new businesses at a faster rate than men are. TIME Reporter-Researcher Leslie Whitaker, who happened to be watching, immediately picked up on the remark. She called Friedan, who told her that she had got her statistics from the Small Business Administration. "When the SBA verified that women were in fact the most dynamic portion of the small- business community," says Whitaker, "I knew I was on to a good story." The result: this week's special report on women entrepreneurs, who these days are running everything from fashion conglomerates to asphalt-paving firms.

The half-dozen TIME reporters who spoke to the businesswomen behind the stats heard tales both harrowing and inspiring. "They have frequently beaten the odds," says Whitaker, "working with less capital, less training and fewer contacts than their male peers. They've created their own opportunities." Few saw their success as a triumph for their sex. "Most women entrepreneurs like to think of themselves as business people first and females second," says Reporter Blake Hallanan, who conducted interviews in the West and Southwest. Washington Correspondent Gisela Bolte agrees: "The women did not strike me as profeminist or antifeminist. Their only cause is to make business work for them."

Staff Writer Janice Castro, who wrote TIME's special report, brought a family interest to the subject. "It never occurred to me that women couldn't succeed in business," says Castro, whose grandmother was running the office of a San Francisco chemical firm in 1914, when she was only 18. Castro's parents co-managed a small meat company. While in college, Castro dreamed of running her own business, but the journalist's notebook won out over the balance sheet.

For Hallanan, who would like to start her own magazine someday, the stories she heard will serve as guidance about what to do -- and what not to do. But then Hallanan also has a role model closer to home: her mother has owned a real estate firm since 1984. "Many of those I spoke with saw starting a business as an outgrowth of the balancing act that so many of them perform at home, from budgeting the grocery list to planning family vacations," she says. "Being an entrepreneur and a woman can be a 36-hour-a-day job."