By Amy Scherzer published in the Tampa Bay Times on November 26, 2014

Helen Gordon Davis couldn't make it to Monday's opening of the new women's business center that bears her name, but the former state senator's son said she was cheered by its debut even as she lives out the "last stages of a very busy and rewarding life." 

The center's small-business finance, management and marketing training programs geared to women entrepreneurs honor her legacy of helping women achieve equal earnings.

Gordon Davis read a statement from his mother noting that the average woman earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man in 1977. That same year, she helped start what became the Centre for Women, now home to the first Small Business Administration-designated women's business center on the west coast of Florida. 

"Now it's up 82 cents for women," he said.

Housed within a historic Hyde Park mansion, the Helen Gordon Davis Women's Business Centre recognizes the legislator who once commissioned a study of equity in state employment with her own money. 

Davis, the first woman from Hillsborough County elected to the Florida House of Representatives, is receiving hospice care. She served six consecutive terms, 1975 to 1988, before being elected to the Senate where she continued to champion women's and civil rights issues from 1989 to 1992.

A $750,000 grant from the Office of Women's Business Ownership plus financial support from TECO Energy, Wells Fargo and other organizations, created the Davis Centre. 

Florida ranks fourth among 50 states in the number of women-owned businesses, said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, who joined U.S. Small Business Administration deputy district director Jonel Hein, Hillsborough County Commission chairwoman Sandra Murman, Centre for Women executive director Ann Madsen and other dignitiaries at the ribbon cutting.

Despite owning nearly one-third of all firms, Castor said, women business owners' market share of revenue has not kept up with their male counterparts. Thus the focus on growth and expansion of existing businesses as well as start-ups. 

Davis Centre director Stacey Banks-Houston, a business owner herself, begins with individual counseling.

"I call it my couch session," she said, with the range of women seeking help stretching from those "with no clue" to those "ready to expand." The first client, an author, sought to write a business plan to market herself as a motivational coach and speaker. 

The center will encourage, empower and elevate enterprising women, Banks-Houston said.

"Not just to start a business, but to stay in business."