Contrary to the stories that most often make the press, women entrepreneurs are driven by the same things as men, says Nan S. Langowitz, professor of management at Babson College and founding director of Babson’s Center for Women’s Leadership. “They want to build businesses and they want personal accomplishment and recognition for it,” she says.

But there is a difference. Women tend to make the move 10 years later in their career than men do, at age 35 or older, because they’ve hit the corporate glass ceiling. When they leave, they take with them strong industry knowledge and good networks — and it is corporate America’s loss.

“Entrepreneurs are the people in your organization who will be creating new products or figuring out new ways to solve existing problems,” says Betty Spence, president of the National Association for Female Executives. “It is a prime talent you want to hold onto.”

In fact, women are starting new businesses at more than twice the rate of men in the U.S., according to research by Bain & Co. a global consulting firm. A blip? Nope, it’s a trend that’s held strong for the last decade, according to The National Foundation for Women Business Owners. Companies owned by women employ more than 13 million people and generate $1.9 trillion in sales, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. And women-owned companies will be pivotal to economic growth. They’re projected to create more than half of the nearly 10 million new small business jobs by 2018, according to The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute.

Companies that want to keep high-potential women on board need to identify high-potential women early, keep them moving up the ladder and give them line jobs, where there is profit and loss responsibility. Too often, women get tracked into corporate support positions such as human resources, finance and legal, while “men hold 88 to 89 percent of line jobs in corporate America,” says Spence. And it’s line jobs that traditionally lead to the corner office.

The point, says Spence, is to “not keep [entrepreneurial women] cordoned off. Get them involved in the most vital aspects of the business.”

Langowitz adds, too, that a culture of advancement begins with a culture of inclusion: “The better you get at allowing everyone to contribute and to bring their full selves to work, the greater opportunity you’ll have to retain entrepreneurial women.”

This article was featured in the May 2011 issue of Working Mother Research Institute’s email newsletter, Working Mother Research Institute Essentials. To read additional stories from that issue, see the related content section below. To subscribe to Working Mother Research Institute Essentials, register on the newsletter page of this website.