In the years after World War II, as women were being pushed from wartime jobs for returning soldiers, government and business leaders—and women themselves—saw small business ownership as a viable economic solution. In just five years, US women owned nearly a million of the nation’s businesses. In the decades since, women have moved increasingly into business ownership, often outpacing male start-ups so that today, they own more than fourteen million businesses, 40 percent of all US companies. 

She’s the Boss chronicles the forces that made entrepreneurship attractive to women. In rich detail, Debra Michals shares the stories of the countless women of all races, ethnicities, genders, and abilities who contributed to this important history. The book also explores the intersection of women’s personal choices within changing social, political, and economic factors, such as the rising divorce rates of the 1960s and 1970s, ongoing workplace and credit discrimination, civil and women’s rights activism and activist entrepreneurs, the 1970s recession and 1980s “Reagan Revolution,” and more recently, the internet, crowd-funding, and social entrepreneurship.

DEBRA MICHALS is an associate professor of women’s and gender studies and chair of the Humanities Department at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts.

Introduction
1    From War Worker to Business Owner: Women, Enterprise, and Postwar Reconversion, 1945-1950
2    Motherhood and Its Discontents: 1950s, Domesticity, the Cold War, and Women’s Business Ownership
3    “Doin’ It for Themselves:” Gender, Race, and Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Socially Conscious 1960s 
4    Sisterhood is (Economically) Powerful: Civil Rights, Feminism, and Women’s Business Ownership in the 1960s and 1970s 
5    Becoming “Entrepreneurs:” Women’s Businesses in the ‘70s Recession and “Go-go” ‘80s
Epilogue: Women’s Entrepreneurship in the 1990s and Beyond
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index