Written By Kyra Gurney

The number of women opening businesses in the borough has shot up 53% in recent years, outpacing the rest of the city.

When Betty Maurice and Elsie Juarez first opened their South Bronx speech therapy business in 2011, they were operating out of a one-bedroom apartment. Parents had to squeeze into the kitchen during their children’s appointments, but Maurice and Juarez could not afford a bigger space. Uncertain of how successful their fledgling venture would be, both women initially kept their day jobs at a Manhattan-based non-profit and worked at the business in the evenings.

Within a year, Maurice and Juarez were able to recover the money they had invested and dedicate themselves to the business full time.

Now, four years later, Chat A Lot Kiddies has 150 clients, seven employees and an expansive office with a colorful consulting space and a proper waiting room. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the South Bronx location. In fact, Maurice and Juarez plan to open a second office on the other end of the Bronx by next year.

“There’s a stigma in the South Bronx, that it’s dangerous, so a lot of clinicians don’t want to come here,” said Maurice. “When we were thinking about opening our business, we said ‘Where can we open it where there’s a big need for it’ and we decided on the South Bronx.”

Maurice and Juarez are among a growing group of women of all education levels and backgrounds opening businesses in the Bronx. The number of women-owned businesses in the borough shot up by 53 percent during a recent five-year period, far outpacing the other boroughs, according to a study released in March by the Center for an Urban Future. The New York-based think tank, which analyzed the U.S. Census Survey of Businesses Owners data from 2007 to 2012, the most recent period for which it is available, also found that female entrepreneurship in the Bronx had increased faster than its male counterpart, which rose 11 percent during the same period.

Women-owned businesses overall, not just in the Bronx, have become an important economic driver in New York City, generating around $50 billion in sales each year, according to a city government report. The number of women entrepreneurs has been on the rise citywide and there are now an estimated 359,000 women with their own businesses in the metropolitan area.

While Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens have a greater number of women-owned businesses, the growth rate in the Bronx is an encouraging sign, say non-profits and government programs that support small businesses in the city.

“Overall, it’s really impressive and exciting to see this growth in the Bronx,” said Amy Parker, a Communications and Operations Associate with the Center for an Urban Future. “It shows a certain amount of investment and opportunity that’s developing there.”

Parker said that the support provided by micro-lending organizations, start-up incubators and other small business initiatives is one factor that has likely contributed to the increase in the Bronx. She also cited “general neighborhood improvements” in the borough, like increased safety, and the Bronx’s affordability compared to other areas.

Small businesses, especially home-based businesses, also provide an attractive opportunity for women without a college education who might otherwise end up in a minimum-wage job, Parker said.

Awilda Velez, the director of the federally funded Bronx Women’s Business Resource Center, cited the Bronx’s large immigrant population as another reason for the increase.

“Entrepreneurship is not something you learn on the soil; it’s something you come [to the U.S.] with,” Velez said. “For a lot of immigrants, it’s a survival skill.”

Following a recent small business workshop hosted by Accion, one of several microfinance organizations that provide support to small business owners in the Bronx, female entrepreneurs told NY City Lens that financial independence and flexible schedules were two of the main reasons they went into business for themselves.

“I think it’s something about just being individual and having some sort of financial independence that only you claim and you control,” said Ese Ofurhie, 33, a Bronx native who created her own digital publication, Enspire Magazine, in 2013.