According to a new survey released this week by the National Association of Women Business Owners, women business owners believe that 2013 will see more women becoming business owners than ever before.  The State of Women-Owned Businesses survey, conducted jointly by NAWBO and Web.com, found that 81% of female entrepreneurs are optimistic about their businesses overall performance over the next year. What’s more, 66% of the 552 women business owners surveyed said they are even more optimistic about 2013 than they were for 2012. But the good vibes don’t stop with existing businesses; according to this sampling 85% predict that there will be more entrepreneurial activity within the female community in the coming 12 months than was experienced in 2012.  While hopeful, this research is easily skewed by the survey respondents—it’s unsurprising that a community of women who already run their own businesses would predict a positive trend in women running their own businesses, no?  That said, Diane Tomb, president of the NAWBO says the group’s members are uniquely poised to make an educated—and accurate—prediction. “Most of our members have been in business for more than six years before joining our organization,” she says of the group. “They not only have a deep understanding of the landscape, but they’ve lived its ups and downs.”  More encouraging is the ongoing uptick in entrepreneurship among women in recent years. In 2007 there were 7.8 million women-owned businesses in the United States, generating $1.2 trillion in revenues, up from 5.4 million in 1997. While there’s no official data on just how the recession has impacted these numbers (2012 numbers will be released in 2014), experts anticipate they will continue to grow as unemployment has increased entrepreneurship nationwide and women in particular look for more attractive alternatives to climbing the corporate ladder.  Along with the growth of the Internet and home-based entrepreneurship, the push to bring women into male-dominated industries has opened opportunities for women that didn’t previously exist—and opened millions of young women’s eyes to the opportunity. Case in point: a Sage study showing half of all women 18-24 want to launch their own ventures.  So why now? On the Kauffman blog, Women 2.0 co-founder Shaherose Charania makes a good case:  It’s a good time to start a business, regardless of gender, so it’s an opportune time to encourage women to take the leap. Startup costs have come down, and open source approaches enable individuals who don’t necessarily have an extensive technical background to become part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Despite the recession, funding is available and accessible, and, overall, the barriers to entrepreneurship are relatively low.  In addition to the gender-neutral indicators, for women specifically there seems to be more interest than ever among investors and lending institutions. “The private sector has woken up to the potential market of women in a very big way,” says Tomb. “Women are starting and growing significant businesses, but the financial services on the horizon can help them to scale.” She’s as encouraged—if not more so—by activity in Washington with increasing focus on female entrepreneurship as a possible solution to the jobs crisis. “Entrepreneurship is a vehicle for jobs creation and women are the future of entrepreneurship,” she says. “The potential is untapped.”  The scene has been set with the rise in women-run funds– Starvest Partners, Women’s Venture Capital Fund and Illuminate Ventures all invest heavily in women as do Comcast and Accel. While exciting and encouraging interest from funds interested in high yield returns also indicates that the promise of female-driven (and female-facing) businesses is being acknowledged. After all, even the most socially-conscious and equal-opportunity of venture capitalists wouldn’t invest in female founders and female-led markets unless there was a return to be made.  Still, despite scads of positive trends and markers, female founders don’t anticipate a clear path to success. Tomb says the survey reveals that women entrepreneurs have remained positive through the stilted economy despite ongoing hurdles. Serious concerns raised by women business owners continue to be dominated by the outlook of the overall economy (57% of those surveyed listed the economy as their biggest concern) but they also face challenges in providing affordable health care to employees, business tax issues and access to great employees. Interestingly, 70.8% of survey respondents said they felt their businesses would not be impacted by Obamacare in 2013.  “The piece that I find most interesting beyond the theme of positivity is how women business owners plan to grow their businesses through social media,” Tomb says. When asked what the future of small business marketing would be, over 44% of NAWBO women said social media marketing and search engine optimization were the key. “This marks a significant change in how women plan to launch and sustain their business growth,” she says. And given women’s overwhelming savvy to social media over the past decade (women lead on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest), the strategy is an indicator of yet another positive growth trend for women.
A new prediction says 2013 will  be the "Year of the Woman Entrepreneur." We were skeptical--but here are 10 signs the experts might (finally!) be right.