Conference Unites Businesswomen the World Over

South African Thandi Mathibela got teary-eyed as she took her place with other female business leaders from around the world who are meeting in Los Angeles this week.

“Here I am from a township, Soweto, interacting with so many high-profile women from all over the world,” Mathibela said after she was introduced at the 44th annual gathering of Les Femmes Chefs D’Entreprises Mondiales (FCEM)--the World Assn. of Women Entrepreneurs. “You know what it means to me? I don’t know of any South African black woman who has done this before.”

Whereas female business owners in the United States get bogged down with problems getting credit or financing, Mathibela and other female entrepreneurs at the conference more often face intractable problems such as racism, lack of education and political instability.

The conference brought together more than 500 entrepreneurs from 20 countries. The last U.S. gathering of the group was 11 years ago in Denver.

The women ranged from small business owners such as Mathibela, whose kitchen design company employs six people, to high-powered company presidents such as Eugenie Burgholte-Kellermann, who oversees 2,400 workers at Kamax, a German firm that sells $285-million worth of steel fasteners annually to Detroit and European auto manufacturers.

In seminars and receptions held with the aid of language-translation headphones at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, the women met to hone their business management practices, share experiences and support each other as female entrepreneurs across international boundaries. The conference ends today.

“Women are the job creators of the new millennium,” said Joke C.M. van den Boer, FCEM president and owner of Maison van den Boer, a Dutch catering firm. “Their numbers are increasing all over the world.”

Women-owned firms represent a third of all new start-ups in many countries, Van den Boer said. But obstacles still persist for women, though they vary from country to country.

In Europe and in North America, lack of financing is the chief hurdle. In some African countries, female entrepreneurs are forbidden from inheriting property from their fathers, she said.

And Eastern European countries that shifted to a free market economy after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 are still grappling with capitalism. FCEM has provided business training to groups of Eastern European female entrepreneurs, Van den Boer added.

Ludmila Tchoubatuk, owner of a 200-employee engineering design firm and head of the Assn. of Women & Business in Russia, said women own only about 7% of the companies in her country.

Participants from more developed countries gave a rosier picture for female entrepreneurs.

In Portugal, the number of female business owners increased 153% from 1990 to 1995, said Maria Teresa D’Avila, who runs four companies and manages 600 employees, including a large electrical cable firm. High unemployment and the singling out of older, female workers for layoffs has sent women into entrepreneurship, particularly with clothing, textile and leather goods companies, she said.

Meanwhile, women in some countries face dramatically contrasting opportunities depending on their geographic location. For example, women in rural Mexico often are denied entrepreneurial opportunities because of the male-dominated culture, said Patricia de Muller, a business consultant and part owner of an industrial park near Guadalajara.

Women in larger cities with more opportunities have started small businesses based on regional economies, such as clothing and shoe manufacturing in Guadalajara, leather goods manufacturing in Leon, vegetable exporting and cattle raising in the state of Sinaloa and tourist-industry supply companies in the state of Quintana Roo and its major city, Cancun, she said.

For South African women, especially blacks, the obstacles for female business owners are compounded by racism, said Mathibela, head of the South African National Assn. of Women Business Owners. But out of that past racism, the divorced mother of two said she was able to create a business. Because white contractors did not go into Soweto and black housewives wanted modern kitchens, Mathibela started the Kitchen Center, a design and installation company, to fill the need.