Women entrepreneurs exist, there just aren't many - yet
Religious conservatives have argued that in the aftermath of communism, women should leave the workplace and return to the home as full-time wives and mothers. Instead, these women are often juggling both work and family lives and becoming an increasingly important part of Poland's success in building a bottom-up vibrant, private-sector economy.
Some examples:
Maria Waskiewicz worked for 10 years as a mechanical engineer in a Bialystok state enterprise, Instal, while rearing three children. She wanted more and got a graduate degree in management. She and her husband in 1991 founded their own company, Wimar, that makes and installs automatic garage doors and gates. Wimar has prospered while similar companies collapsed after Western competitors arrived. Today it has a payroll of 34, plus three in management, and is a distributor for U.S. company Raynor and Germany's Bosch.
"I am tremendously happy. I am the master of my fate and can answer yes or no. I'm so busy. And I love to discuss technical problems with my clients," says Waskiewicz, who has also built Wimar's 2,000-square-meter manufacturing complex and has a large office building under construction.
Gralyna Wojtan of Warsaw learned foreign trade by working for Hortex and Interpegro in decades past and took those skills private in 1993 with the creation of her firm GMW Trading, which focuses on selling bulk frozen fruits and vegetables to wholesalers in England and Scandinavia. Freed from the bureaucracy of giant, socialist enterprises, she has become an expert on the fast-changing frozen food industry and an agent for change, shopping for suppliers who will give her "the best quality at a reasonable price."
Mariola Zieba is a veteran of building and refurbishing heating-plant boilers, working decades in lodz state enterprises. Impatient with their state of economic limbo in the final days under communism, she founded her own company, Mawi, in 1989 and got the certification to build gas boilers. Today, she has patents on some models including one that is top ranked on the Polish market. With 20 employees and many more subcontractors, she has a commanding niche in the market and as an entrepreneur vs. a hired hand, states the benefits succinctly: "I'm making money and getting satisfaction from what I'm doing."
They were among the 120 women entrepreneurs at the two-day Zakopane conference, which was sponsored by Project Firma 2000, a USAID contractor working with local business consultants as power has been "devolved" from central to city governments.
Project Firma's director June Lavelle noted that women-owned businesses are major factors for growth in Western market economies and the same appears to be true in Poland - only no one has the numbers. She shaped her own database and managed an exceptionally high return of 10% from the questionnaires sent to 2,200 women-owned businesses of more than 20 employees.
She also detected a very different profile from the Western norm, reflecting the socialist past where many women possessed engineering and mechanical skills. The survey showed that "54.5% of Polish women entrepreneurs are in producer services and another 30% are in manufacturing." She said this counters "the stereotype that women are (only) in micro enterprises."
For the most part, these women entrepreneurs don't know each other. The Zakopane conference aimed to change that by putting together 120 women business owners from more than 70 cities and towns.
The speakers included some of the women entrepreneurial superstars of the past decade.
Ten years ago, attorney Ewa Plucinska was asked by the Polish government to draft the legal framework for foreign investors wanting to buy into the troubled Szczecin Shipyard. Her closest friends told her she was crazy for accepting because she knew nothing about shipyards or foreign investors. She said it was high time someone started learning how to do this and it might as well be her.
That legal work led her to form a small consulting firm, EVIP. Today, it has seven divisions. And this summer EVIP Progress, in a consortium with the Gdynia Shipyard, won a hotly contested bid to buy and restructure the bankrupt Gdansk Shipyard, the birthplace of the Solidarity movement.
Another risk-taker is Anna Janczewska-Radwan, an economist by training who worked for Vartex, a German medical supply company, for five years. In 1990, she opened her own firm, Medim, with 10 people. She now employs 105 and sells U.S., German and Swiss equipment to hospitals and the increasing number of private-sector physicians.
Plucinska and Janczewska-Radwan started a Polish association of women entrepreneurs (PSWF) in April with 20 top business owners as founding members. These include Krystyna Kaszuba, editor of the glossy monthly Twoj Styl, Irena Szolomicka-Orfinger of facial creme company Eris, Joanna Stolarska of Inter-Media and Urszula Strykier of Auto Hit Tychy.
At the Zakopane meeting, Plucinska and Janczewska-Radwan signed up a 21st founding member: former industry minister and Nicom consulting CEO, Henryka Bochniarz, who also is a two-term president of the Polish Business Roundtable of multinational and Polish CEOs.
Some examples:
Maria Waskiewicz worked for 10 years as a mechanical engineer in a Bialystok state enterprise, Instal, while rearing three children. She wanted more and got a graduate degree in management. She and her husband in 1991 founded their own company, Wimar, that makes and installs automatic garage doors and gates. Wimar has prospered while similar companies collapsed after Western competitors arrived. Today it has a payroll of 34, plus three in management, and is a distributor for U.S. company Raynor and Germany's Bosch.
"I am tremendously happy. I am the master of my fate and can answer yes or no. I'm so busy. And I love to discuss technical problems with my clients," says Waskiewicz, who has also built Wimar's 2,000-square-meter manufacturing complex and has a large office building under construction.
Gralyna Wojtan of Warsaw learned foreign trade by working for Hortex and Interpegro in decades past and took those skills private in 1993 with the creation of her firm GMW Trading, which focuses on selling bulk frozen fruits and vegetables to wholesalers in England and Scandinavia. Freed from the bureaucracy of giant, socialist enterprises, she has become an expert on the fast-changing frozen food industry and an agent for change, shopping for suppliers who will give her "the best quality at a reasonable price."
Mariola Zieba is a veteran of building and refurbishing heating-plant boilers, working decades in lodz state enterprises. Impatient with their state of economic limbo in the final days under communism, she founded her own company, Mawi, in 1989 and got the certification to build gas boilers. Today, she has patents on some models including one that is top ranked on the Polish market. With 20 employees and many more subcontractors, she has a commanding niche in the market and as an entrepreneur vs. a hired hand, states the benefits succinctly: "I'm making money and getting satisfaction from what I'm doing."
They were among the 120 women entrepreneurs at the two-day Zakopane conference, which was sponsored by Project Firma 2000, a USAID contractor working with local business consultants as power has been "devolved" from central to city governments.
Project Firma's director June Lavelle noted that women-owned businesses are major factors for growth in Western market economies and the same appears to be true in Poland - only no one has the numbers. She shaped her own database and managed an exceptionally high return of 10% from the questionnaires sent to 2,200 women-owned businesses of more than 20 employees.
She also detected a very different profile from the Western norm, reflecting the socialist past where many women possessed engineering and mechanical skills. The survey showed that "54.5% of Polish women entrepreneurs are in producer services and another 30% are in manufacturing." She said this counters "the stereotype that women are (only) in micro enterprises."
For the most part, these women entrepreneurs don't know each other. The Zakopane conference aimed to change that by putting together 120 women business owners from more than 70 cities and towns.
The speakers included some of the women entrepreneurial superstars of the past decade.
Ten years ago, attorney Ewa Plucinska was asked by the Polish government to draft the legal framework for foreign investors wanting to buy into the troubled Szczecin Shipyard. Her closest friends told her she was crazy for accepting because she knew nothing about shipyards or foreign investors. She said it was high time someone started learning how to do this and it might as well be her.
That legal work led her to form a small consulting firm, EVIP. Today, it has seven divisions. And this summer EVIP Progress, in a consortium with the Gdynia Shipyard, won a hotly contested bid to buy and restructure the bankrupt Gdansk Shipyard, the birthplace of the Solidarity movement.
Another risk-taker is Anna Janczewska-Radwan, an economist by training who worked for Vartex, a German medical supply company, for five years. In 1990, she opened her own firm, Medim, with 10 people. She now employs 105 and sells U.S., German and Swiss equipment to hospitals and the increasing number of private-sector physicians.
Plucinska and Janczewska-Radwan started a Polish association of women entrepreneurs (PSWF) in April with 20 top business owners as founding members. These include Krystyna Kaszuba, editor of the glossy monthly Twoj Styl, Irena Szolomicka-Orfinger of facial creme company Eris, Joanna Stolarska of Inter-Media and Urszula Strykier of Auto Hit Tychy.
At the Zakopane meeting, Plucinska and Janczewska-Radwan signed up a 21st founding member: former industry minister and Nicom consulting CEO, Henryka Bochniarz, who also is a two-term president of the Polish Business Roundtable of multinational and Polish CEOs.
