Oregon’s women-owned businesses are killing it. Lest that remotely feminist-sounding assertion attract naysayers, a study by finance site Lendio just named Oregon the fourth best state for woman small business owners—and they have the numbers to prove it.

According to Census Bureau data, women owned 39 percent of Oregon’s employer businesses in 2021, from Portland’s oldest topless bar, owned by Vicki Keller, to its first vegan doughnut shop, owned by Carly Sitner and Crystal Wegener. Of those businesses, 29 percent make more than $1 million in revenue—or way more, as is the case at Elephants Delicatessen, which raked in $23 million under Anne Weaver’s ownership in 2022. Oregon also had 10 percent more woman-owned businesses in 2020 than it did in 2012, though the rankings don’t account for how the pandemic might have changed that number. 

Perhaps most notably, women filed 15 percent of Oregon’s patents—more than in any other top-ranked state. The University of Oregon can claim a lot of them: Susan Sokolowski, director of the Sports Product Design Program, holds more than 100; Danielle Benoit, Lorry Lokey Chair of the Department of Bioengineering, holds dozens. Disparate access to mentorship can mean that women in STEM are more likely to invent without pursuing intellectual ownership, according to Bloomberg Law. In an effort to close the gap, the university’s Women’s Innovation Network offers resources for researchers and would-be patentees. Seven patents have been filed by members of the program.

The fact that women entrepreneurs do comparatively well in Oregon doesn’t make their path an easy one. A couple years ago, the Sports Bra owner Jenny Nguyen struggled to find banks that would back her idea for a Portland bar dedicated to women’s athletics; on March 26, those very words were a clue in the New York Times crossword puzzle. 

Some, of course, still see the business world and a man’s world as one and the same. “I had men as mentors and supervisors, and they couldn’t coach me on how to close a business deal with a guy who had his arm around my chair,” says Mandy Gettler, coleader of University of Oregon Women’s Innovation Network. 

But the next generation of business owners couldn’t ask for a better group of mentors waiting for them beyond the glass ceiling.