Women and Entrepreneurship

 
women are gradually taking their life into their hands and waiting for a man to before they can live their life the recent statistic shows that more women are engaging more into entrepreneurship

The gender pay gap remains all too real, but women around the world are closing the entrepreneurship gap. The divide between male and female founders has shrunk by 6% since 2012, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2014 Women’s Report.   

 The 2014 report, which studied 83 economies, up from 61 in the previous report, shows that women are increasingly driving the world’s economies. But all is not rosy.


Here are 5 key findings on the status of women entrepreneurs.
Women started more businesses.  In 2014, more than 200 million women were starting or running new businesses, a 7% increase.  Women in the United States were among the most likely to start companies (11% vs 26% of men).

Women were increasingly innovative. Women entrepreneurs in nearly half the surveyed economies were selling products and services that were new to consumers and not generally offered by competitors at rates equal to or higher than men.

Women were more likely to be solo entrepreneurs, but those with co-founders were more likely to want to scale. Among solo founders, fewer wanted to expand their companies to create jobs for others than in 2012. But in economies that had a higher percentage of women entrepreneurs starting companies in teams–three or more people- had a greater proportion of founders who wanted to grow their companies and create jobs. Teams of founders were most common in the Middle East.

Women who know entrepreneurs were more likely to become entrepreneurs. More evidence of the importance of role models: Economies where women were more likely to know founders had higher start-ups rates, with the exception of European economies.

Women worried about failure more than men. About 46% of women felt less confident in their ability to succeed, compared to 59% of male founders, with lower start-up rates in economies where women were most concerned about failure.  Fear of failure was lowest in the African and Asian economies. Forty-one percent of women said they would not take new opportunities for fear of failing, compared to 34% of men. One reason that fear persists: In every economy studied, with the exception of China and India, women-owned companies closed more frequently than those owned by men.

Forbes