In the early 1970s, the following riddle initially stumped many who heard it: "A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene, and the son is rushed to the hospital. At the hospital, the surgeon looks at the boy and says, 'I can't operate on this boy; he is my son.' How can this be?"
 

Today the answer seems simple: the surgeon was the boy's mother. But 50 years ago, by cultural default, most people assumed surgeons, doctors, lawyers, professionals, and business owners were always men. Though the women's rights movement was in full swing, the prevailing thought was that a woman's place was in the home or, if circumstances demanded, employed as a secretary, nurse, or school teacher-all considered acceptable "women's work." Fifty years earlier, in the 1920s, it was a novelty for women to hold even those jobs.

A century ago, the idea of women as business owners was nearly unimaginable, even as the world was slowly being awakened to its reality. The phenomenon of female entrepreneurs grew throughout the twentieth century, having an unimagined positive impact on economies around the globe. Here are just a few examples of early pioneering women in business:

In 1919, silent film star Mary Pickford-famous as "the little girl with the golden curls"-co-founded United Artists with movie pioneers Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks. Their goal was to produce and distribute their own films while raking in the profits. "The inmates have taken over the asylum," industry leaders quipped, but Mary became Hollywood's first female studio head and, by 1923, the most powerful woman in the film industry, a position she held for decades. Unlike other actresses, Mary didn't have to worry about the "casting couch" because she owned the couch. Over a century later, the company she co-founded is still an entertainment industry leader.

In 1923, Elizabeth Arden was a household name for her cosmetics line. She had opened her first spa on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1910-when it was rare for women to wear makeup-and hired chemists to develop her skincare products. In 1922, the company became one of the first global brands. In 1947, Arden became the first woman to appear on the cover of "Time" magazine. Arden died in 1966, but her company is still going strong, with $1.2 billion in annual revenues.

In 1923, the leading name in fashion worldwide was Coco Chanel. From an inauspicious start, raised in a Catholic orphanage where she learned to be a seamstress, she opened a millinery shop in Paris in 1910. A decade later, she was not only a style icon but had launched what remains to this day the world's most famous perfume: Chanel No. 5. Fifty-two years after her death at age 88, Chanel's name is still carried on clothing, fragrances, and jewelry.

In 1937, Margaret Rudkin began baking stone-ground wheat bread in the kitchen of her family's Connecticut farmhouse for her son, who suffered from asthma and food allergies. The family doctor soon recommended her bread to other patients and encouraged her to sell it to the public. So, she opened a bakery in her kitchen, which became successful so quickly that she had to move the enterprise into the garage. By the end of 1939, Margaret had sold more than a million loaves and was featured in "Reader's Digest." In 1940, she moved her business from the farm into a factory while keeping the name of her family's 123-acre property: Hickory Farms. In 1961, Margaret sold the business to Campbell Soup for $28 million and was the first woman to serve on Campbell's board of directors.

In 1961, housewife Jean Nidetch went on a diet recommended by the New York Department of Health after a life-long battle with her weight. Worried she might "cheat," she invited friends for coffee and asked if they'd like to join her in weekly meetings to discuss how they were getting on. Within a year, Nidetch lost 72 pounds. To share her success, she opened the first Weight Watchers in New York in 1963 and began franchising the concept a year later. Nidetch sold the company to Heinz in 1978 for $1 billion. The company now estimates that more than one million people worldwide attend a weekly Weight Watchers meeting.

By the 1980s, women entrepreneurs like Martha Stewart and Vera Bradley owned 25 percent of all U.S. firms. Moreover, the public and politicians widely acknowledged that women entrepreneurs were vital to the nation's economy. New initiatives, including how-to seminars and government programs, sought to ensure women had the necessary resources to start and grow their businesses.
In 1988, Congress passed The Women's Business Ownership Act ending discrimination in lending, eliminating state laws that required married women to have a husband's signature for all loans, and giving women-owned businesses a chance to compete for lucrative government contracts.

The digital revolution of the 1990s and early 2000s enabled women entrepreneurs to break into technology-based businesses in record numbers and use technology to start, run, promote and accelerate all types of companies. Today, with faster and cheaper Internet, cloud, and mobile technologies, women can manage a business from anywhere with far less startup capital. Women now own 30 percent of all U.S. businesses, many of them in industries thought to be the exclusive domain of men until just a few decades ago.

The Shopper celebrates the accomplishments of businesswomen everywhere-and with good cause: this magazine is a woman-owned business founded in 1981 by Jean Loxley-Barnard. Throughout The Shopper's 42-year history, Jean has been an equal opportunity employer whose staff has continuously included some of Hampton Road's most gifted women and men. To read Jean's memories of her personal journey as a woman in business, turn to "Publisher's Point" on page 5 of this issue.

We also invite our readers to turn to this issue's "Women in Business" centerspread, where they will meet some of Hampton Roads' most successful and innovative businesswomen. And if you do business with them, thank you for telling them tell them you saw them in The Shopper.