Gender or Attitude?

By Matthew Mohr

Employers in our region and nation wide continue to struggle with a shortage of workers. With only 67 available workers for every 100 job openings, it’s hard to achieve enterprise goals, serve customers and grow. Most business owners have a hard time understanding how this tight labor market occurred or why it persists. Some of this situation was caused by the pandemic, government encouraging people not to work and a record number of people dropping out of the workforce. Many people chose family over finances and left gainful employment last year, which compounded the shortage of available workers. Women comprise a large portion of our current workforce. Statistically 57.4% of all women work and are part of our labor force. This percentage has continued to grow over many decades. In comparison 69.2% of men work today. The peak for men, as the percentage of all men working, occurred in 1948 at 86.6%. Part of the increase in women working came from a dramatic change in society’s attitude over time. Many continue to believe women are unfairly exempted from higher responsibility roles, even though women actually account for 51.8% of all workers employed as management professionals.

We highlight 25 great women achievers in this issue of Prairie Business, every one of them are certainly successful. Many years ago, my great aunt had aspirations to become a successful business woman. My great aunt was very intelligent, strong, and a hard-working person. She grew up in Fargo-Moorhead, then moved to Minneapolis. At one time she felt she had saved enough money to buy a business called the Dutch Maid Grill here in Fargo. (Nicole’s Fine Pastry and Café currently occupies the building that housed the Dutch Maid at the time of my great aunt’s interest.) My great aunt was determined to buy the business and felt she had the money, but her father forbade it. Apparently her father felt women were not supposed to be sole proprietors, even though by today’s standard he and his wife would be considered co-owners of their corner grocery store.

After being forbidden at becoming her own business woman, my great aunt spent time on the west coast helping the family establish a large and very successful chain of ice cream stores. Although my great aunt completely respected and loved her father, she carried some resentment toward him for not “allowing” her to pursue the business opportunity until she died. Nicole’s is certainly a very successful enterprise today. Perhaps the Dutch Maid would have thrived under my great aunt’s leadership, and became a huge success, but she never got the chance due to her respect of her father and what appears today to be a very outdated set of standards concerning women in business.

Fortunately for our whole society, attitudes about women in the workforce and as business owners has changed.

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Cassandra Ryckman Black Hills State University

Majors: Accounting

Graduation Date: Spring 2022

Career path: Open own accounting business

“I think it’s so exciting because when you get the debits and credits to balance, there’s just something about it. It’s problem-solving, getting the answer, and your job is always different; you’re never doing the same thing.”