In his 1990 book Megatrends 2000, Ameri- can author and futurist John Naisbitt predicted women would make a major mark in industry.

Naisbitt argued that in the information age of the 21st century work would depend upon brain, not brawn. Highly intelligent employees could not be managed with the traditional high-pressure approach, and so an opportunity had opened for women managers. No less intelligent than men, women had a set of values and a management style better suited to the new standard and so were fated to become prominent players in the new age.

Women saw "personal growth" as an important element of one's attitude toward life and consciously responded to this trend, where for more and more people achievements were seen as part of their own personal universe.

For example, the British "green" company--The Body Shop--was established some 30 years ago. In 1976 Anita Roddick, who had been a teacher, was running a bed-and-breakfast with her husband. To support the family, she borrowed £10,000 from the bank. Thirty-four-year-old Roddick had no medical education or any chemistry or beautician background whatsoever and felt her way forward relying upon herself alone. She opened her first small shop in a small town on the south coast of England selling handmade beauty products.

Roddick traveled to villages in India and along the Amazon to learn how the local people used natural plants as materials for skin care and makeup. The Body Shop was the leader in the cosmetic industry groundswell to attach importance to environmentalism, the protection of animals and an admiration for the natural world, making it a major international firm recognized worldwide with currently more than 2,000 branches located throughout the world.

A global survey report by the OECD published in 2004, Women's Entrepreneurship: Issues and Policies, indicated that in 2002 some 28% of the 23 million businesses in the US were headed by women (6.4 million). The situation in Canada was even more startling. Between 1981 and 2001, the number of female-led companies grew by 208%, while male-led companies grew by only 38%.

Although there was a growth trend in female bosses in all countries, one should not assume an optimistic picture. The incomes of many female bosses are low and most are engaged in street-vendor-style underground economic activities.

At the turn of the millennium, the UN set the goal that by the year 2015 the number of people living in poverty worldwide should be cut in half. As part of this effort, "micro-enterprises" and "micro-credit" were considered important strategies for relieving poverty in the Third World.

The first step in opening up any business is getting the capital. In all countries women find themselves in a relatively weak position as far as capital markets are concerned. Even in the US, where female entrepreneurship is most encouraged, the proportion of loans to women starting businesses falls far short of that for men. The Small Business Administration (SBA) set up by the US Congress in 1953 is responsible for assisting those starting businesses to obtain financing and to make recommendations to the government. In 1991 loans to women starting up businesses accounted for 12.4% of all SBA loans; in 1995 the proportion was up to 24% and by 2000 it had slipped back a bit to 21%.

The difficulties women experience in fundraising include being hampered by traditional roles and a lack of support from others. For example, women have an insufficient understanding of financing, and banks do not have confidence in making loans to women. They rely too heavily on previous loan histories, and demand higher collateral when loaning money to women. Thus in the US, Finland and Poland a financing system has been developed exclusively for new women entrepreneurs, to clear the structural and cultural obstacles away so the groundswell for women entrepreneurship can continue to develop worldwide.

The road for female entrepreneurship is full of thorns but the most recent surveys reveal the boundless vigor of the female entrepreneur. For example, the top person this year on the list of China's most wealthy is Zhang Yin of Nine Dragons Paper, who started out in the resource recycling business. Merrill Lynch's first Asia-Pacific Wealth Report noted last year that there were close to 60,000 people in Taiwan with individual assets exceeding US$1 million, putting Taiwan at No. 7 in the region and making it an Asia-Pacific country with a high proportion of wealthy people. More surprising was that 40% of these wealthy individuals were women, the highest proportion in the Asia-Pacific region. Merrill Lynch attributed the reason for this overall position to the flourishing and vigorous business starts of Taiwanese women.

In the Taiwan workplace female upper-level managers have long been in the vanguard. Women entrepreneurs have naturally have no reason to take a passive position and can boldly break into the business area previously dominated by men and create their own universe.