For the fifth straight year, we're devoting our end of year e-newsletter to a review of the most noteworthy womenabling news and research. Normally, our review encompasses events over the past year. This year, however, since 2013 is the silver anniversary of the Women's Business Ownership Act of 1988 (an event we lovingly refer to as "the big bang of women's entrepreneurship in the US"), we're looking back over the past 25 years. So here, in chronological order, are what we consider to be the milestones of women's entrepreneurial research from 1988 to today:

1. Congress to Census: Count ALL Women-owned Businesses  Back in the early days of the women's business movement - before the passage of the WBO Act of 1988 - it was commonly thought that women-owned firms were all very small, home-based, and did not make a significant economic contribution. After being directed to include all women-owned firms in the count, the next business census published (the 1992 Census, published in 1995) boosted the number of women-owned firms (after adding in c corporations) by only 9%, but the employment being provided by women-owned firms shot up by 111% and revenues generated skyrocketed by 145%. This got everyone's attention! 
2. The Soundbite Heard 'round the World  The research that put the National Foundation for Women Business Owners (NFWBO, which later became the Center for Women's Business Research-CWBR) on the map was a report, "Women-Owned Businesses: The New Economic Force," that analyzed Census, Dun & Bradstreet and Fortune 500 data and came up with the oft-repeated estimation that, given trends in employment among women-owned firms and in the Fortune 500, 1992 would be the year that "women-owned firms will employ more people in the U.S. than the largest corporations combined."
3. A Wake-up Call to Bankers  Also drawing upon Dun & Bradstreet data, a 1995 report from the NFWBO, "Women-Owned Businesses: Breaking the Boundaries," found that women-owned firms were just as financially stable and creditworthy as all U.S. firms - a myth-busting finding that woke up bankers and started the corporate rush to do business with women business owner customers.
4. Going Global  When the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor consortium formed in 1999, robust information on firm formation and growth barriers began to be collected in an internationally comparable and sex-disaggregated manner. There have been six  GEM Women & Enterprise reports published, the first in 2005 and the latest in 2013.
5. From a Focus on Capital to a Global Academic Sisterhood  Also in 1999, five female academics came together to study the issue of access to capital for women business owners. The Diana Project brought much-needed attention on the dearth of women on both sides of the venture capital equation. The effort has morphed into an international consortium of academic researchers studying all aspects of women's entrepreneurship.
6. Sharing Lessons Learned  The entrepreneurial energy being generated by women business owners in the U.S. was beginning to be felt elsewhere. In 1997, 2001 and 2004 the OECD hosted global gatherings of policy makers and practitioners to discuss women's entrepreneurship policy and practice. Two 2004 reports from the National Women's Business Council (NWBC), "Best Practices in Supporting Women's Entrepreneurship in the United States" and "Policy and Progress Supporting the Growth of Women's Business Enterprise" were key contributions shared at the 2004 gathering.
7. Proving Program Value  At the same time that U.S. women's enterprise policies and programs were being held up as global best practices, one of those programs - the Women's Business Center program - began to come under fire from budget-cutters in the U.S. Congress. With program funding in jeopardy, the NWBC and CWBR each published reports ("Analyzing the Impact of the Women's Business Center Program" from NWBC and "Launching Women-Owned Businesses: A Longitudinal Study of Women's Business Center Clients" from CWBR) quantifying the value of the program and staving off program elimination.
8. Understanding Women's Entrepreneurial Diversity  With growing knowledge of the growth of women-owned businesses in general came a desire to know more about the diversity of women business owners. The NFWBO, in 1998 and later in 2000, published reports from surveys conducted among women business owners of color and among Latinas in particular, and in 2001 published estimates - based on U.S. Census Bureau data - of the number and growth in minority women-owned firms. 
9. Filling a Growing Appetite  The Census Bureau's Survey of Business Owners is only conducted every five years, and is published with a 3-year lag, so the growing appetite for up-to-date facts and figures called for more frequent estimates. For the past three years, Womenable and American Express OPEN have published  State of Women-Owned Business reports, providing timely estimates and detailed analysis of important trends in women's entrepreneurship.
10. Diving Deeper: Toward a Better Understanding of Growth  The new focus in women's enterprise development is growth, and there is growing demand for more nuanced information about how women-owned enterprises evolve as they grow larger. A recent analysis from American Express OPEN and Womenable, " Growing Under the Radar," finds that even though majority-owned women-owned firms remain at 2% of the  women's business population, the number of women-owned firms with $10 million+ in revenue has grown 47% faster than all firms in that category. And the National Women's Business Council recently published an infographic focused on women-led employer firms, finding that 36% of employer firms are at least 30% women-led. Both of these studies whet our appetites for more!