Women as Entrepreneurs: Lessons Unlearned?
2022
Enterprise Research Council

Key findings:
The support landscape for women’s entrepreneurship continues to fail to provide women with required flexible, tailored, best-practice, gender-aware support.
Women entrepreneurs are important, distinct and diverse communities within the wider entrepreneurial population.
Too many women entrepreneurs continue to report actual, or perceived, difficulties with financial intermediaries and wider business support initiatives.
Immediate action must be taken to prevent similarly gendered atrophy of women’s businesses post-Covid as was seen during and after the 2008 Global Economic Crisis.

Policy implications:
Policies and programmes to encourage and support entrepreneurs must recognise their diversity and embed this within their approaches.
A national strategy is required to achieve ratios of UK women owned businesses comparable to ‘best-in-class’ countries.
A clearer route to policy should be developed to translate research evidence into policy action e.g., through an annual Female Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Conference.
Sustained, substantial government support is needed to develop a robust and accessible women’s entrepreneurship support network, locally, regionally and nationally, across all four nations in the UK.
A national framework of support must be developed, built around existing, local, focused, trusted, quality providers.
Gender-disaggregated, annual HM Treasury reporting is essential to ensure that commitments made to provide targeted support result in measurable and impactful outcomes.

The Alison Rose review of female entrepreneurship: Progress report
2022
Alison Rose

Key findings:
The major barriers for women entrepreneurs continue to be inequitable access to, and awareness of funding, inequitable caring responsibilities, lack of enabling entrepreneurship support ecosystems for women.
Caring responsibilities: Women entrepreneurs continue to suffer from the inequitable division of caring work, a situation exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. Women entrepreneurs reported spending 6-10 hours more per week on caring work than men entrepreneurs during the pandemic. Women entrepreneurs were 62% less likely than men to report post-pandemic recovery in their businesses. 44% of women entrepreneurs reported the urgent need for additional childcare support (versus 34% for men).
Enabling entrepreneurship: 68% rise in signatories to HM Treasury’s Investing in Women Code, which requires signatories to a) adopt best practice in supporting female business owners, and b) collect and publish gender disaggregated data to enhance transparency.

Policy implications:
Government should consider how best to support the development of targeted support for women entrepreneurs through public/private partnership working, designated policy support, ministerial buy-in and policy promotion, pan-government and public institution support, transparent funding, outcome measurement and reporting.

The Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs: How targeted support for women-led business can unlock sustainable economic growth
2022
Mastercard

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to funding and business training; negative gender stereotypes; the inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.
(Aotearoa specific): There exists a lack of affordable childcare, which disproportionately affects women

Policy implications:
Gender lens in policy-making is required to ensure equitable outcomes for women entrepreneurs.
Explore the effects of policy in action (are policy intentions resulting in equitable results outcomes?).
Explore why almost four times as many women as men are ‘pushed’ into (necessity) entrepreneurship.
More funding required for good quality, locally-based childcare.

Women, Business and the Law 2022
2022
World Bank Group

Key findings:
Inequitable access to finance and training, negative gendered stereotypes, gendered sectoral segregation e.g., health and social care versus construction, inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.

Policy implications:
Implement and enforce gender equality laws.
Support greater legal equality for women.
Developed economies should focus on systemic and structural barriers that result in ongoing inequalities for women.

Women entrepreneurs: Catalyzing growth, innovation, and equality
2022
Citi GPS

Key findings:
Inequitable access to finance (especially Venture Capital), international markets, mentoring, networks, training, cumulative disadvantage for some women e.g., non-Whites, differently abled, refugee women, gendered sectoral segregation e.g., health and social care versus construction, inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.

Policy implications:
Legislate for gender equality;
Tackle systemic and structural barriers/biases that lead to inequitable outcomes for women.
Collect gender disaggregated, internationally comparable data on women entrepreneurs.
Introduce gender-aware procurement policies and practices.
Invest in accessible, gender-aware business training support for women.
Facilitate public policy, private sector, and legislative collaborations to support women’s entrepreneurship.

A Guide to Fostering Women’s Entrepreneurship: Five key actions towards a digital, green and resilient Europe
2021
European Commission

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs are an underutilised of economic growth, job creation, and social well-being.
Supporting more women into entrepreneurship would improve gender equality, and provide diverse potential solutions and innovations for the green transition and recovery from the pandemic.
Women are under-represented in science and technology (particularly digital technology) – a situation fueled by gender bias and lack of visible role models.
Women entrepreneurs suffer from the inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.
The Covid-19 pandemic has adversely affected women’s businesses more than men’s due to their general location in more vulnerable sectors e.g. hospitality, retail and leisure.
More support is needed to encourage women into entrepreneurship – business support and training, gender-specific equality-focused policy interventions, equitable access to finance, visibility of female role models, availability of mentors etc.

Policy implications:
Challenge gendered stereotypes of entrepreneurship.
Develop life-long entrepreneurial learning offerings in schools, Universities and communities covering topics such as: finance, growth/investment readiness, network development, ICT and digital technologies.
Adopt gender-sensitive, multi-agency, pan-regional approaches to promoting and developing women’s entrepreneurship.
Ensure collection of gender-disaggregated, comparable data across regions to build robust, evidence-based policy interventions.
Enhanced visibility of female role models.

The Alison Rose review of female entrepreneurship
2019
Alison Rose

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs need better, more equitable access to funding at all stages from start-up to growth.
Women launch businesses with, on average, 53% less capital than men.
Only 1% of all venture funding goes to businesses founded by all-female teams, inhibiting scale up.
Enhanced family support is required to mitigate the inequities associated with the gender imbalance in unpaid domestic labour and caring roles for entrepreneurial women.
Women are typically more risk-aware than men and are more cautious about starting or scaling a business.
Women are (incorrectly) less likely to believe they possess entrepreneurial skills.
Women are far less likely than men to know other entrepreneurs or to have access to sponsors, mentors or professional support networks.

Policy implications:
Develop and mandate best practice, gender aware funding approaches for financial institutions, incorporating transparent, gender disaggregated reporting.
Develop and deploy new investment vehicles to encourage and support investment in women-owned businesses by financial institutions, high net worth individuals and investment institutions.
Investigate necessary adaptations to existing finance mechanisms to support entrepreneurs with caring responsibilities.
Tackle the access inequities of the urban/rural divide.
Support community-based public/private partnership (PPP) initiatives to provide entrepreneurship, financial literacy and self-belief training, alongside mentoring, coaching and networking, to aspiring entrepreneurs, delivered in schools to both youth and adult learners.
Expand availability of, and gender-aware access to, business networking and mentoring events and activities, particularly regionally.
Support PPP development of a digital ‘one-stop shop’ information and resources portal for aspiring and established entrepreneurs.

Women’s entrepreneurship report: Education and finance for successful entrepreneurship in Africa
2019
UN Economic Commission for Africa

Key findings:
Opportunity entrepreneurship produces more profit and more employment than necessity entrepreneurship.
Secondary education and above is positively correlated with opportunity entrepreneurship.
Education positively correlates with engagement with formal financial institutions, which encourages both business growth and formal (rather than informal) entrepreneurial activity.
Women’s businesses with access to formal lending exhibited higher levels of product and process innovation.
Entrepreneurial skills development training is transformational for supporting vulnerable women out of poverty.

Policy implications:
Ensure equitable access to education for girls and women.
Improve availability of and access to informal entrepreneurial education, especially for women denied the chance to complete their formal education.
Provide targeted training in business management, leadership, digital technologies, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
Challenge gendered stereotypes (including gendered sectoral segregation).
Deploy digital technologies to support financial empowerment (especially saving and engagement with formal financial institutions).
Provide equitable access to insurance products for vulnerable women entrepreneurs to help insulate them and their businesses against economic or other shocks.

Tackling the Gender Gap: What Women Entrepreneurs Need to Thrive
2017
Shaheen, J.

Key findings:
Few role models, and a lack of mentors, contribute to the perception that entrepreneurship is a male-only endeavor; the gender pay gap undermines the ability of women to be successful entrepreneurs.
Unequal access to startup funding and financing streams leaves women with fewer credit options and a small portion of venture capital.

Policy implications:
Legislate for transparent, equitable pay.
Increase girls’ exposure to ICT and science-based education to increase numbers of women in (high value) STEM careers.
Challenge traditional gender stereotyping and enhance the visibility of non-traditional role models.
Increase women’s access to small loans and grants.
Make small business support and training more relevant for the digital age (and for online trading).
Provide high quality business mentoring to women.
Ensure the availability of local, high quality, low-cost childcare.
Incentivise start-ups to locate in deprived areas through student loan forgiveness schemes.
Tackle (un)conscious bias in recruitment, promotion etc. through training and regular review.

Advancing women’s empowerment: Growing women’s entrepreneurship through ICT in Southeast Asia
2017
The Sasakawa Peace Foundation and Dalberg

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to finance; networks; start-up support/training; mentoring; negative gendered stereotypes; and the inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.

Policy implications:
Reduce gender-based barriers to women’s entrepreneurship and increase rewards.
Increase training for, and access to, ICT to decrease gendered barriers and increase income.
Develop multi-stakeholder/collaborative support provision (policy makers, philanthropists, private sector organisations, etc.).

Strengthening women’s entrepreneurship in ASEAN: Towards increasing women’s participation in economic activity
2017
OECD

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to finance; domestic and international markets; networks, and start-up support/training; negative gendered stereotypes; lack of opportunities to enter high-value sectors; lack of support through public procurement; inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare; and a lack of visible role models

Policy implications:
Develop gender sensitive and responsive policies and strategies.
Improve women’s access to flexible, affordable finance; access to markets; ICT training; start-up and business management training; improved networks and networking opportunities.
Improve visibility of successful/impactful women entrepreneur role models.
Develop mechanisms for women entrepreneurs to feed-into policy development.
Address gendered disparities in the workplace (including entrepreneurship).
Deal with gender-based traditional/cultural/legal barriers e.g., women not being able to own assets and land.
Enhance gender diversity in public procurement policies and practices.

Women unbound: Unleashing female entrepreneurial potential
2017
PwC and The Crowdfunding Center

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from inequitable access to funding (also lack of visibility/awareness of the issue), negative gendered stereotypes, limited awareness of crowdfunding as a potential source of more equitable external business finance, and a lack of training re. crowdfunding.
There exists a lack of diversity in finance sector alongside a lack of (unconscious) bias training within finance sector, both of which disadvantage women entrepreneurs.

Policy implications:
Promote crowd-funding platforms to increase gender equality in seed funding acquisition.
Provide training in crowdfunding e.g., through Business Support providers and Business Schools.
Instigate gender (unconscious) bias awareness training for traditional financial institutions.
Promote visibility of female role models and success stories.

Policy brief on women’s entrepreneurship
2017
OECD

Key findings:
Women are under-represented in entrepreneurship compared with men.
Women’s businesses tend to be crowded into sectors with low barriers-to-entry and low profit margins.
Women more often pursue entrepreneurship for gendered reasons i.e., to manage family/caring responsibilities, due to the glass ceiling and lack of upward career progression.
Women face multiple, often simultaneous barriers to entrepreneurial careers including: lack of training in entrepreneurial skills, gendered social and cultural attitudes that discourage entrepreneurial careers for women, greater difficulty (relative to men) accessing start-up financing, smaller and less effective entrepreneurial networks, and policy frameworks that discourage women’s entrepreneurship.
Access to entrepreneurial training and grants are useful in combatting barriers faced by women, but are not wide-reaching enough at present.
Lack of visibility of successful female entrepreneurial role models hampers engagement.
Gendered educational systems still steer girls towards traditionally female subjects and away from high-value, high-prestige subjects e.g., STEM.

Policy implications:
Ensure government policies (e.g., family, social and tax policies) do not discriminate against women or create barriers to entrepreneurship.
Tackle gendered subject choices for girls and boys in educational settings.
Use public procurement as a tool to support women’s businesses.
Improve access to start-up and growth finance for women entrepreneurs.
Make entrepreneurship training, including growth readiness training available through dedicated incubator and accelerator programmes.
Policies must recognise the heterogeneity of women.
Challenge gendered stereotypes at every level.

Putting all our ideas to work: Women and entrepreneurship
2015
BIAC and Deloitte

Key findings:
Women’s businesses tend to be located in (gendered) sectors which are less attractive to investors e.g., retail, education, healthcare.
Structural barriers mean that women’s businesses start with less capital, grow less quickly, and employ fewer people than men’s.
When women seek external funding, they request far less than their male counterparts.
Women tend to start businesses later in life than men.
Women entrepreneurs are often highly educated (degree level).
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to finance; negative gendered stereotypes; unconscious bias; male-dominated funding organisations (particularly VC); inequitable entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Policy implications:
Facilitate and normalise women’s access to STEM subjects and entrepreneurship training.
Enhance business environments – ease of access to information, training, resources/support systems, finance.
Support flexible working policies to ensure employed women can continue working as they build their businesses.
Provide affordable, local childcare.
Support development and enhancement of women’s networks.
Invest in enhanced ICT infrastructure e.g., high-speed internet availability, even in rural areas.
Ensure application of a gender lens in policy making to tackle inequalities for women entrepreneurs.

Women as Entrepreneurs: Lessons Unlearned?
2022
Enterprise Research Council

Key findings:
The support landscape for women’s entrepreneurship continues to fail to provide women with required flexible, tailored, best-practice, gender-aware support.
Women entrepreneurs are important, distinct and diverse communities within the wider entrepreneurial population.
Too many women entrepreneurs continue to report actual, or perceived, difficulties with financial intermediaries and wider business support initiatives.
Immediate action must be taken to prevent similarly gendered atrophy of women’s businesses post-Covid as was seen during and after the 2008 Global Economic Crisis.

Policy implications:
Policies and programmes to encourage and support entrepreneurs must recognise their diversity and embed this within their approaches.
A national strategy is required to achieve ratios of UK women owned businesses comparable to ‘best-in-class’ countries.
A clearer route to policy should be developed to translate research evidence into policy action e.g., through an annual Female Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Conference.
Sustained, substantial government support is needed to develop a robust and accessible women’s entrepreneurship support network, locally, regionally and nationally, across all four nations in the UK.
A national framework of support must be developed, built around existing, local, focused, trusted, quality providers.
Gender-disaggregated, annual HM Treasury reporting is essential to ensure that commitments made to provide targeted support result in measurable and impactful outcomes.

The Alison Rose review of female entrepreneurship: Progress report
2022
Alison Rose

Key findings:
The major barriers for women entrepreneurs continue to be inequitable access to, and awareness of funding, inequitable caring responsibilities, lack of enabling entrepreneurship support ecosystems for women.
Caring responsibilities: Women entrepreneurs continue to suffer from the inequitable division of caring work, a situation exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. Women entrepreneurs reported spending 6-10 hours more per week on caring work than men entrepreneurs during the pandemic. Women entrepreneurs were 62% less likely than men to report post-pandemic recovery in their businesses. 44% of women entrepreneurs reported the urgent need for additional childcare support (versus 34% for men).
Enabling entrepreneurship: 68% rise in signatories to HM Treasury’s Investing in Women Code, which requires signatories to a) adopt best practice in supporting female business owners, and b) collect and publish gender disaggregated data to enhance transparency.

Policy implications:
Government should consider how best to support the development of targeted support for women entrepreneurs through public/private partnership working, designated policy support, ministerial buy-in and policy promotion, pan-government and public institution support, transparent funding, outcome measurement and reporting.

The Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs: How targeted support for women-led business can unlock sustainable economic growth
2022
Mastercard

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to funding and business training; negative gender stereotypes; the inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.
(Aotearoa specific): There exists a lack of affordable childcare, which disproportionately affects women

Policy implications:
Gender lens in policy-making is required to ensure equitable outcomes for women entrepreneurs.
Explore the effects of policy in action (are policy intentions resulting in equitable results outcomes?).
Explore why almost four times as many women as men are ‘pushed’ into (necessity) entrepreneurship.
More funding required for good quality, locally-based childcare.

Women, Business and the Law 2022
2022
World Bank Group

Key findings:
Inequitable access to finance and training, negative gendered stereotypes, gendered sectoral segregation e.g., health and social care versus construction, inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.

Policy implications:
Implement and enforce gender equality laws.
Support greater legal equality for women.
Developed economies should focus on systemic and structural barriers that result in ongoing inequalities for women.

Women entrepreneurs: Catalyzing growth, innovation, and equality
2022
Citi GPS

Key findings:
Inequitable access to finance (especially Venture Capital), international markets, mentoring, networks, training, cumulative disadvantage for some women e.g., non-Whites, differently abled, refugee women, gendered sectoral segregation e.g., health and social care versus construction, inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.

Policy implications:
Legislate for gender equality;
Tackle systemic and structural barriers/biases that lead to inequitable outcomes for women.
Collect gender disaggregated, internationally comparable data on women entrepreneurs.
Introduce gender-aware procurement policies and practices.
Invest in accessible, gender-aware business training support for women.
Facilitate public policy, private sector, and legislative collaborations to support women’s entrepreneurship.

A Guide to Fostering Women’s Entrepreneurship: Five key actions towards a digital, green and resilient Europe
2021
European Commission

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs are an underutilised of economic growth, job creation, and social well-being.
Supporting more women into entrepreneurship would improve gender equality, and provide diverse potential solutions and innovations for the green transition and recovery from the pandemic.
Women are under-represented in science and technology (particularly digital technology) – a situation fueled by gender bias and lack of visible role models.
Women entrepreneurs suffer from the inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.
The Covid-19 pandemic has adversely affected women’s businesses more than men’s due to their general location in more vulnerable sectors e.g. hospitality, retail and leisure.
More support is needed to encourage women into entrepreneurship – business support and training, gender-specific equality-focused policy interventions, equitable access to finance, visibility of female role models, availability of mentors etc.

Policy implications:
Challenge gendered stereotypes of entrepreneurship.
Develop life-long entrepreneurial learning offerings in schools, Universities and communities covering topics such as: finance, growth/investment readiness, network development, ICT and digital technologies.
Adopt gender-sensitive, multi-agency, pan-regional approaches to promoting and developing women’s entrepreneurship.
Ensure collection of gender-disaggregated, comparable data across regions to build robust, evidence-based policy interventions.
Enhanced visibility of female role models.

The Alison Rose review of female entrepreneurship
2019
Alison Rose

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs need better, more equitable access to funding at all stages from start-up to growth.
Women launch businesses with, on average, 53% less capital than men.
Only 1% of all venture funding goes to businesses founded by all-female teams, inhibiting scale up.
Enhanced family support is required to mitigate the inequities associated with the gender imbalance in unpaid domestic labour and caring roles for entrepreneurial women.
Women are typically more risk-aware than men and are more cautious about starting or scaling a business.
Women are (incorrectly) less likely to believe they possess entrepreneurial skills.
Women are far less likely than men to know other entrepreneurs or to have access to sponsors, mentors or professional support networks.

Policy implications:
Develop and mandate best practice, gender aware funding approaches for financial institutions, incorporating transparent, gender disaggregated reporting.
Develop and deploy new investment vehicles to encourage and support investment in women-owned businesses by financial institutions, high net worth individuals and investment institutions.
Investigate necessary adaptations to existing finance mechanisms to support entrepreneurs with caring responsibilities.
Tackle the access inequities of the urban/rural divide.
Support community-based public/private partnership (PPP) initiatives to provide entrepreneurship, financial literacy and self-belief training, alongside mentoring, coaching and networking, to aspiring entrepreneurs, delivered in schools to both youth and adult learners.
Expand availability of, and gender-aware access to, business networking and mentoring events and activities, particularly regionally.
Support PPP development of a digital ‘one-stop shop’ information and resources portal for aspiring and established entrepreneurs.

Women’s entrepreneurship report: Education and finance for successful entrepreneurship in Africa
2019
UN Economic Commission for Africa

Key findings:
Opportunity entrepreneurship produces more profit and more employment than necessity entrepreneurship.
Secondary education and above is positively correlated with opportunity entrepreneurship.
Education positively correlates with engagement with formal financial institutions, which encourages both business growth and formal (rather than informal) entrepreneurial activity.
Women’s businesses with access to formal lending exhibited higher levels of product and process innovation.
Entrepreneurial skills development training is transformational for supporting vulnerable women out of poverty.

Policy implications:
Ensure equitable access to education for girls and women.
Improve availability of and access to informal entrepreneurial education, especially for women denied the chance to complete their formal education.
Provide targeted training in business management, leadership, digital technologies, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
Challenge gendered stereotypes (including gendered sectoral segregation).
Deploy digital technologies to support financial empowerment (especially saving and engagement with formal financial institutions).
Provide equitable access to insurance products for vulnerable women entrepreneurs to help insulate them and their businesses against economic or other shocks.

Tackling the Gender Gap: What Women Entrepreneurs Need to Thrive
2017
Shaheen, J.

Key findings:
Few role models, and a lack of mentors, contribute to the perception that entrepreneurship is a male-only endeavor; the gender pay gap undermines the ability of women to be successful entrepreneurs.
Unequal access to startup funding and financing streams leaves women with fewer credit options and a small portion of venture capital.

Policy implications:
Legislate for transparent, equitable pay.
Increase girls’ exposure to ICT and science-based education to increase numbers of women in (high value) STEM careers.
Challenge traditional gender stereotyping and enhance the visibility of non-traditional role models.
Increase women’s access to small loans and grants.
Make small business support and training more relevant for the digital age (and for online trading).
Provide high quality business mentoring to women.
Ensure the availability of local, high quality, low-cost childcare.
Incentivise start-ups to locate in deprived areas through student loan forgiveness schemes.
Tackle (un)conscious bias in recruitment, promotion etc. through training and regular review.

Advancing women’s empowerment: Growing women’s entrepreneurship through ICT in Southeast Asia
2017
The Sasakawa Peace Foundation and Dalberg

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to finance; networks; start-up support/training; mentoring; negative gendered stereotypes; and the inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.

Policy implications:
Reduce gender-based barriers to women’s entrepreneurship and increase rewards.
Increase training for, and access to, ICT to decrease gendered barriers and increase income.
Develop multi-stakeholder/collaborative support provision (policy makers, philanthropists, private sector organisations, etc.).

Strengthening women’s entrepreneurship in ASEAN: Towards increasing women’s participation in economic activity
2017
OECD

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to finance; domestic and international markets; networks, and start-up support/training; negative gendered stereotypes; lack of opportunities to enter high-value sectors; lack of support through public procurement; inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare; and a lack of visible role models

Policy implications:
Develop gender sensitive and responsive policies and strategies.
Improve women’s access to flexible, affordable finance; access to markets; ICT training; start-up and business management training; improved networks and networking opportunities.
Improve visibility of successful/impactful women entrepreneur role models.
Develop mechanisms for women entrepreneurs to feed-into policy development.
Address gendered disparities in the workplace (including entrepreneurship).
Deal with gender-based traditional/cultural/legal barriers e.g., women not being able to own assets and land.
Enhance gender diversity in public procurement policies and practices.

Women unbound: Unleashing female entrepreneurial potential
2017
PwC and The Crowdfunding Center

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from inequitable access to funding (also lack of visibility/awareness of the issue), negative gendered stereotypes, limited awareness of crowdfunding as a potential source of more equitable external business finance, and a lack of training re. crowdfunding.
There exists a lack of diversity in finance sector alongside a lack of (unconscious) bias training within finance sector, both of which disadvantage women entrepreneurs.

Policy implications:
Promote crowd-funding platforms to increase gender equality in seed funding acquisition.
Provide training in crowdfunding e.g., through Business Support providers and Business Schools.
Instigate gender (unconscious) bias awareness training for traditional financial institutions.
Promote visibility of female role models and success stories.

Policy brief on women’s entrepreneurship
2017
OECD

Key findings:
Women are under-represented in entrepreneurship compared with men.
Women’s businesses tend to be crowded into sectors with low barriers-to-entry and low profit margins.
Women more often pursue entrepreneurship for gendered reasons i.e., to manage family/caring responsibilities, due to the glass ceiling and lack of upward career progression.
Women face multiple, often simultaneous barriers to entrepreneurial careers including: lack of training in entrepreneurial skills, gendered social and cultural attitudes that discourage entrepreneurial careers for women, greater difficulty (relative to men) accessing start-up financing, smaller and less effective entrepreneurial networks, and policy frameworks that discourage women’s entrepreneurship.
Access to entrepreneurial training and grants are useful in combatting barriers faced by women, but are not wide-reaching enough at present.
Lack of visibility of successful female entrepreneurial role models hampers engagement.
Gendered educational systems still steer girls towards traditionally female subjects and away from high-value, high-prestige subjects e.g., STEM.

Policy implications:
Ensure government policies (e.g., family, social and tax policies) do not discriminate against women or create barriers to entrepreneurship.
Tackle gendered subject choices for girls and boys in educational settings.
Use public procurement as a tool to support women’s businesses.
Improve access to start-up and growth finance for women entrepreneurs.
Make entrepreneurship training, including growth readiness training available through dedicated incubator and accelerator programmes.
Policies must recognise the heterogeneity of women.
Challenge gendered stereotypes at every level.

Putting all our ideas to work: Women and entrepreneurship
2015
BIAC and Deloitte

Key findings:
Women’s businesses tend to be located in (gendered) sectors which are less attractive to investors e.g., retail, education, healthcare.
Structural barriers mean that women’s businesses start with less capital, grow less quickly, and employ fewer people than men’s.
When women seek external funding, they request far less than their male counterparts.
Women tend to start businesses later in life than men.
Women entrepreneurs are often highly educated (degree level).
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to finance; negative gendered stereotypes; unconscious bias; male-dominated funding organisations (particularly VC); inequitable entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Policy implications:
Facilitate and normalise women’s access to STEM subjects and entrepreneurship training.
Enhance business environments – ease of access to information, training, resources/support systems, finance.
Support flexible working policies to ensure employed women can continue working as they build their businesses.
Provide affordable, local childcare.
Support development and enhancement of women’s networks.
Invest in enhanced ICT infrastructure e.g., high-speed internet availability, even in rural areas.
Ensure application of a gender lens in policy making to tackle inequalities for women entrepreneurs.