Women start businesses all the time, but they run few world-changing businesses. Even those who manage to land outside funding don't tend to wind up with businesses as large as those run by men.

But there is no reason women-owned businesses can't be as large and profitable--if not more so--than those run by men. This isn't just about achieving gender equality for its own sake--the U.S. economy would be better off if more women grew larger businesses, said Sangeeta Bharadwaj Badal, Ph.D., Gallup senior consultant and lead reseacher in entrepreneurship. As Badal explained in a recent interview, "women are 50 percent of the U.S. population and should be creating 50 percent of new companies and jobs."

Unfortunately, the stats tell a different story. While women own about a million employer firms--or businesses with at least one employee--and employ about 8 million people, they fall short when compared to men. Men own about 3 million employer businesses employing about 41 million people, and add over $8 trillion dollars to the U.S. economy each year.

Women-owned businesses contribute just over a trillion dollars.

The question is, "why shouldn't we leverage the diverse thinking, creativity, innovation capacity and diverse cognitive resources of 50 percent of our population?" said Badal. "It would help create bigger, better, and more socially relevant ventures," more jobs, and a growing economy.

The trick is how to make it happen, given the myriad reasons for why women tend to build smaller companies. Badal argues that one crucial step involves women understanding what makes them different and capitalizing on those talents to drive business outcomes. "[A woman entrepreneur] should understand her natural ability to process and think through information," she said, and "how she makes decisions that affect her bottom line, how her decisions could be distorted by different kinds of biases, how she fosters strong partnerships."

To be fair, not knowing their strengths isn't the only reason women have been held back in business. Unlike men, women face insitutional sexism, particularly in tech hubs like Silicon Valley, and they tend to go after and receive less funding. In fact, the amount of investor dollars going to female founders was less than five percent just a decade ago.

Regardless, Badal contends that when a woman begins to understand her strengths and weaknesses, she can create a road map to nurture the former and smooth over the latter. This will "yield extraordinary results," she offered, and "it will accelerate her personal development and positively influence the sustainabilty and growth of her venture."

Fortunately, there are some encouraging signs out there. E-commerce remains a strong niche for women founders hoping to get funded--nearly 40 percent of e-commerce startups with venture backing were founded or co-founded by a woman. And 14 percent of venture capital investments in general this year in the U.S. went to companies founded or co-founded by a woman.