Amanda Elam, lead author of the GEM 2023/2024 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, highlighted some good news on the women’s entrepreneurship front during our report launch event:
- Women represent a large proportion of high potential entrepreneurs driving economic growth and social progress.
- In China, Colombia, Ecuador, Lithuania, and Thailand women’s entrepreneurship is at parity or higher compared to men.
- Highlighting successful women entrepreneurs is making a difference.
The report launch also featured an engaging panel with Aileen Ionescu-Somers, GEM Executive Director; Cristina Oyon, SPRI representative, Basque Government; Wingee Sin, Global Program Director, Cartier Women's Initiative; Mahsa Samsami, Researcher and Report Co-author; and Iñaki Peña Legazkue, Professor at the University of Deusto and GEM Spain.
You can access the Women's Entrepreneurship Report, released in November 2024.
Also, the latest GEM Global Report, launched on 18 February in Bilbao, features insights about women's entrepreneurship. In most economies, men are more likely to start a business than women, and far more likely to own an established business. Furthermore, these gaps typically increase with income level. Out of 51 economies, there are 14 in which male early-stage entrepreneurial activity rates exceed that of females by five percentage points or more. Nine of these are in the high-income group.
However, as targeted support programmes for women have increased, so too have women’s startup rates. At the same time, far too many women entrepreneurs are still seen by national experts as not getting equal access to resources essential to entrepreneurial success. Women’s relative access to those resources is scored as less than sufficient in almost half of the economies (25 of 51), including 10 from the high-income group.