(Article originally published in celebration of International Women's Day 2020)
Female entrepreneurship has come a long way in the past 20 years, but we still have much road to cover.
Monitoring key indicators of how successful women are in starting and scaling their businesses is a key priority for many countries, and governments have launched a range of initiatives to support women in business.
Not surprisingly, there are many organisations that collect and analyse data on the status of female entrepreneurship, yet, this information remains quite fragmented and dispersed. For instance, at the European Union level, there doesn't seem to exist any consistent, annual information being published about the birth, survival, and death rates of businesses launched and/or owned specifically by female entrepreneurs in EU countries. The latest report that was published on the issue, seems to be the 'Statistical data on Women entrepreneurs in Europe' document that was released back in 2014. At a more international scale, perhaps the annual report by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), which, among else, provides some data on female entrepreneurship rates in 50 economies across the world, including 23 from Europe & North America, seems to be the most comprehensive effort.
As a result, when seeking to get up-to-date information about how female entrepreneurs are performing, you often need to search through multiple sources.
We here at Draseum believe that one doesn't have to wait for International Women's Day to look at current stats about female entrepreneurship, as anytime is perfect to celebrate how female entrepreneurship indicators have improved, and to reflect on the areas that still need more work. So, we've dived deep into the 2019/2020 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report and we bring you some key observations.
As one of Draseum's key priorities is to support female entrepreneurs (including those located in rural or remote areas) to start-up and grow, we've looked through the GEM report as well as some of the most up-to-date information currently available, and we've collated this in the form of an easy-to-comprehend infographic.
As a first note, we would like to stress that the infographic simply grasps a glimpse of the status of female entrepreneurship in Europe, and is by no means comprehensive. Think of it as an amuse-bouche.
While the infographic does include some general information about average rates of female entrepreneurship across Europe, we were particularly interested to examine female entrepreneurship in our two key markets, the UK and Greece.
As a note, these two markets often emerged from the research as 'extreme' cases. For instance, when women were asked what would prevent them from starting a business, fear of failure was a common response - but it was women in Greece that reported the highest rate in Europe (a shocking 71%).
What is also interesting is that, in both markets, 'earning a living' was the key motivation that was reported from women entrepreneurs whose businesses were at the early stage (more so in the UK than in Greece). While other motivations were mentioned (e.g. 'making a difference' to the world), making ends meet and launching a business to bring income because alternative opportunities are rare, was the most important reason, according to the GEM report.
This is quite surprising, and perhaps disappointing, but it is our hope that as efforts to support women in launching their own businesses continue across Europe, we will soon start to see a different future being drawn - one where women increasingly feel more and more empowered to pursue entrepreneurial activity for more varied and self-fulfilling reasons.
We would love to hear your thoughts about these stats. You can connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn, via email (info@draseum.org), or via our contact form.
Take care!
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