Boston grew the company substantially after her husband's death and at one point it had 45 employees.

But after the 2001 terrorist attacks, business declined and the company had to lay off staff. It now has 24 employees, but has begun to grow again.

"In the last six months, it's been a lot better," Boston said. The privately held company had revenues of about $3 million last year, she said.

Boston believes that female business owners face the same challenges men do.

"Everyone's concerned about the price of health care, getting and keeping good employees," she said.

But some local female business owners say operating a company can often be more challenging for a woman than for a man.

"In construction, people still don't take you seriously at first. People will ask me if my dad owns the company," said Charlotte Szynskie, owner of The Szynskie Group Inc., an electrical engineering and lighting design firm in southeast Denver. "There's still a cultural bias against women in business. You can cave in or meet the challenge."

Szynskie, an electrical engineer, said most engineering firms are run by men, so clients may be taken aback at first.

She started her business in 1983 after she was laid off from an electrical engineering job. Her company focuses on commercial, light industrial, roadway and hospital work.

"We have done a lot of municipal work. There aren't many women who run engineering firms, and that gave us a distinct advantage," she said.

Szynskie's firm did electrical engineering work for the 7 million- square-foot DIA terminal building, and the Millennium Bridge at the end of the 16th Street Mall.

Jan Allen, president of PayTech Inc., began her company about five years ago. PayTech administers payrolls, compensation structure, benefit design, recruiting and other human resource functions for companies.

The company will open satellite offices in Los Angeles and Chicago in the next year, Allen said. It now has 32 employees and expects to add another 50 in the next year.

"I found a niche because of the need for payroll. Even after 9/11, we never went down," she said. "Everyone runs payroll."

Allen previously served as payroll director for a large company and knew it was difficult to find temporary personnel to handle payroll when an employee was out on leave.

PayTech also offers a range of human resource services.

"We often get into a company through the payroll side and then they find out about our HR abilities," she said.

Allen said she runs the company on cash and it has never had debt.

"Women-owned businesses are just coming into their own now, in the last 10 years. It's always been men-driven before," she said.

"I've been able to do this because payroll and HR are mostly a woman's area. But you also have to have the know-how to convince CEOs that it's necessary to get experts to help them with payroll."

By the numbers

152,894 Number of majority female-owned firms in Colorado, 32.5 percent of all private businesses in the state

$23 billion: Amount of annual sales from majority female-owned Colorado companies

186,730 Number of people employed by those companies

92,291 Number of equally owned (50-50) firms, 19.6 percent of private Colorado businesses

All Numbers Are Estimated. Source: Center For Women's Business Research Using Bureau Of The Census Data

Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.

"Now there are more opportunities for women. There's more money from banks available to women," said Julie Boston, president of CG Press in Broomfield. "Banks want to grow businesses with women. Women are good risks and they listen to their employees."

According to the Washington, D.C.-based research group's recent report, Colorado ranked 10th in the United States in the growth from 1997 to 2004 of businesses at least 50 percent owned by women, with a nearly 27 percent increase.

The state ranks 13th overall in the number of privately held, primarily female-owned businesses, up two spots from two years ago.

The report also said there are an estimated 10.6 million privately held firms in the U.S. that are 50 percent or more female-owned, accounting for nearly half - 48 percent - of all privately held firms. These firms generate $2.46 trillion in sales and employ 19.1 million people nationwide.

"We estimate that women-owned firms are growing at close to twice the rate of all privately held firms, 17 percent vs. 9 percent. These businesses are a critical component of the economy, not only in terms of their influence, but also in terms of their economic impact," said Myra Hart, chairman of the Center for Women's Business Research and a professor at Harvard Business School.

 Boston took over family-run CG Press when her husband died in 1990. Until then, she had raised the couple's children and had only worked at the printing company for about nine months.

The company does color printing and prints technical manuals. Its clients include manufacturers, universities and software companies.