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Making Book on Women in Business
SCSU prof pens profiles of pioneering Pollys
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Business New Haven
11/13/2000
By: Michael C. Bingham
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To teach a new Southern Connecticut State University course on women in management a few years ago, instructor Jeannette M. Oppedisano need to find a suitable textbook that included instructive tales of women who started their own businesses or became executives at existing companies.
When publisher after publisher told that, because female entrepreneurs were a “recent phenomenon,” no such titles existed, Oppedisano decided to write her own.
Earlier this fall her Historical Encyclopedia of American Women Entrepreneurs: 1776 to Present was published by Greenwood Press of Westport. The tome outlines the life stories of women from Jane Addams to Oprah Winfrey, who surmounted barriers to become leaders in their respective fields.
“The women in this book clearly demonstrate that all things are possible,” says Oppedisano, who endeavored to profile women of diverse ages and ethnicities. One of them is 70-year-old Patricia Billings, an artist whose search for a chemical compound to protect her sculptures from damage led to the creation of “Geobond,” an adhesive with wide applications in the construction industry due to its remarkable fire-resistant qualities.
Oppedisano profiled women from both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors - even the world's oldest profession: Ada and Minna Everleigh operated Chicago's upscale Everleigh Club from 1900 to 1911 and retired as millionaires. The Everleigh's employed hundreds of women over the years, and workers took home half of what each client spent.
In these stories, Oppedisano explains, “It's not the business that's important, it's what got them to choose the venture and what they did with it.” She points to Aunt Clara Brown, freed from slavery and relocated to Colorado. Brown opened a laundry business cleaning and ironing for miners - and earned enough money to invest in the mines themselves (making, in effect, her clients her employees). She later used her fortune and business connections to helping freed slaves find work and shelter.
Connecticut-connected women profiled by Oppedisano include Rachel Bell and Sara Sutton, founders of Stamford-based JobDirect.com, Pepperidge Farm founder Margaret Rudkin, Westport do-it-yourself diva Martha Stewart and Ann Lee, who founded the Shakers.
The point, Oppedisano says, is that in the 21st century, the only thing holding businesswomen back is herself.
“If the women in the book can do what they did in the face of such dramatic adversity as slavery, the absence of legal rights, the tragic loss of loved ones and the other obstacles in their way, why can't we do anything?”
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