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The economic impact of women business owners has been underestimated because women-led firms have not been recognized, according to a new study released Monday.

Using 2002 Census data, the most recent figures available, the National Women's Business Council found that women-led firms accounted for 3% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product in addition to the 9% generated by women-owned businesses.

"We're hoping this distinction between women-owned and women-led will enter the vernacular now," says Margaret Barton, executive director of the NWBC, a bi-partisan Federal government council.

Until now the women-owned firm -- defined as at least 51% owned by a woman or women -- was the only form in which women business owners were recognized in published Census data. As a result, women-led firms -- those where a woman owns a percentage of the business at least equal to any other owner and where women manage daily operations -- have gone unnoticed.

Using both published and previously unpublished data from the 2002 Survey of Business Owners and Self-Employed Persons, the two-part study found that women-led firms accounted for more than $300 billion in revenues, or about 3% of the U.S. GDP, employed 2.5 million employees, and paid nearly $56 billion in payroll.

The study also reports that there was a combined total of 7.5 million women-led or women-owned firms, employing 9.6 million people and generating close to $1.2 trillion in revenues, or about 12% of GDP in 2002.

"Our intention is to remind the administration, the Small Business Association and Congress that women entrepreneurs are significant players in the economic landscape," says Barton. "I don't feel that the playing field is entirely level, but now we have more leverage to ensure that it becomes so."

The study also found that in 2002 more than 80% of both women-led and women-owned firms were run by white women; however, it was Asian women-owned or women-led firms that produced the highest receipts per firm. California had the most significant number of women-led firms, and the three dominant industries were retail trade, health care and social assistance, and professional, scientific, and technical services.