TEMPLE, TX — Women owned businesses in Temple aren’t hard to come by.
Just ask Amy Thomas, the owner of Zooty’s, a small boutique.
She can name all of her store neighbors in the plaza her shop is in.
Most of them are women.
Owning a business runs in Thomas' blood.
“My mother was a business woman, my grandmother was a business woman, they taught me an awful lot,” Thomas explained.
She learned a lot, both personally and professionally, from the older generations.
The lessons gave her some confidence to open up her own shop 12 years ago.
“They also taught my sister and me, you can do anything you want to, but you gotta work for it and you cannot make excuses,” she said. “So, I don’t make excuses.”
You can find clothes, locally-crafted jewelry, monogrammed goodies and more at the boutique.
However, she said it’s not all rainbows and butterflies, especially during the pandemic.
“Right now, most small business owners have not been paid in a year,” she admitted. “We have not, I mean, because we're making sure that our staff is paid.”
She explained that being a woman business owner did not put any additional challenges in her way.
However, all women across the state cannot say the same.
According to business.org, women get paid 20% less than men in Texas.
That would mean female workers would stop getting a paycheck in late October, while men would get paid year round.
“When you start factoring people, mapping people based on the jobs they do, and how far along they are in their career, most of that number disappears,” Dr. Robert Tennant, the interim department chair of accounting at Texas A&M Central Texas said.
He said that getting women in positions that are usually occupied by men will help bridge the pay rate gap.
“For example, having a female vice president shows people in different roles than they've ever seen before,” he thought.
Thinking back to what her own mother would say, Thomas said women can do anything a man can do.
All you have to do is…
“Put on some lipstick, you’ll feel better,” she said while smiling.
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