This weekend I read an article about home-based business in the New York Times. Essentially the article encourages people who run home-based businesses to be transparent, and represent themselves accurately. If you run your business out of your kitchen, say so. If you’re self employed, don’t pretend you’re a “we” when you’re really an “I.” Pretending to be something your not isn’t going to gain you respect in any meaningful way, and may eventually backfire on you. (This is precisely why I don’t have “CEO” or some other title on my business card. I don’t need a title, it’s just me and my shadow running the show.)

But something tangential occurred to me as I read this article, and that is how “female” business has become. I’m a newcomer to the business world, and my expertise on feminism doesn’t extend much beyond a few Women Studies classes at Smith College, so I may not articulate this very well, but it seems to me that the win/lose, zero sum, black-and-white, either/or male model of business is a dying breed. It’s exciting to look around and see the transformation business is undergoing, and I think the much of the credit is largely due to women, or at least a more feminine way of looking at the world.

The article I referenced states that 50% of business are home based, and their earnings are half a trillion dollars. There are so many non-traditional business models: coworking, freelancing, web-based business, mompreneurs, and more. Within corporate business, flex-time, on site daycare, casual Friday, and yes even bringing pets to work, and the ubiquitous lava lamps, and large rubber balls, are changing the flavor of business.

And it’s not just business modes and methods, it’s our interaction with careers that have changed as well. According to the Labor Department, “the average person born in the later years of the baby boom held 10.5 jobs from age 18 to 40.” In 2006, the most recent year for which there are statistics, 54 million Americans, or 40 percent of the work force, left their jobs. If people aren’t changing jobs they’re likely to be specializing in different areas, or acquiring additional vocations– no one, it seems has only one job, every one is a lawyer/writer/life coach. The slash has become an indispensable mark of puncutation. Along with Americans changing jobs, or adding to the jobs they already have, there is (for better or for worse) the inevitable blurring of work and home life.

I can’t help but think (although my opinion isn’t based on any hard evidence) that these revolutionary changes in business are largely derived from the contributions and (though I hate to use such a woo-woo term) energy of women in the workplace. What do you think?