Women play a crucial role in the society as homemakers and by bearing the heaviest responsibilities. Their participation in business has not been without challenges and has made women-owned business not to thrive as the men-owned ones thereby remaining as small and medium enterprises. The women-owned business would benefit a great deal by utilizing the GRS services to enhance their operations and improve their chances of succeeding.
According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report for Women 2016/17, 274 million women-owned operating businesses in 74 economies, and 111 million of the figure were operating successful enterprises by 2016.
Global economic activity by women is being promoted by agreements and partnerships even as technology and globalization remove barriers to doing business across regions, cultures and gender. Women give back to the society most of their proceeds from business thus the importance of their participation in business.
To better promote the participation of women in business it is crucial to understand some trends, perceptions and activity from the world over and the GEM report helps to give that much-needed insight. The following are some interesting and vital patterns and findings from the GEM report:
Developing nations have almost equal number of men and women as entrepreneurs than developed ones
The highest parity between male and female entrepreneurs was observed in Asia and Latin America making factor-driven economies to register higher Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA). The nations in the innovation-driven stage of development have women at 60% of the rate of women get into the business-a massive difference with the factor-driven economies. The benefits of technology in developed nations seem not to motivate women to get into entrepreneurship.
Higher numbers of women than men attribute their joining business to opportunity
A more significant number of women than men, actually 20% more, give their reason for joining the business as having identified opportunity, which is the case in factor-driven economies too. In innovation-driven economies, the fact is even more prominent, with more women – three and a half times more-citing opportunity motive and not necessity motive as their reason for venturing into business.
The higher Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) is linked to this opportunity mentality. Moreover, the report shows that women are more likely to be innovative than men in all the 74 countries under the study-women are five per cent more likely to be creative than men.
More significant numbers of women than men never establish own businesses
Despite the number of women who wish to set up their businesses being almost equal to that of men, there is a huge gap between business owners in both sexes. The implication is that fewer women get to start their businesses. Also, a higher number of women than of women is likely to quit the business at the initial stages (in factor-driven economies, it is 4 out of 10 women).
The pattern changes in innovation-driven economies where only 2 out of 10 women abandon entrepreneurship. The discontinuation in business by women is associated with low growth expectations and the fact that women are engaged in a more significant way in their primary role of being families’ caregivers.
Women are more inclined to community-driven initiatives
Over half of women-owned businesses in developed countries are in the areas of health, social services, education or dealing with the government. According to the report, women tend to venture into sectors that are usually labour-intensive. This could be due to women’s naturally higher emotional appeal.
Entrepreneurial activity reduces with the rise in economic development
Unexpectedly, the entrepreneurial activity drop among women as their economic development improves leading to there being a wider gender gap. Although developing countries register more business activity, fewer ventures are likely to get to mature stage.
Developed nations were observed to favor business activity more, but portrayed lower growth than businesses owned by men. It is also surprising as it was noted women in developed countries had less belief in their entrepreneurial potential than those in developing countries.
With increase in education level, entrepreneurial activity drops
Participation in entrepreneurial activity was observed to decrease with improvement in the level of education. This is a clear indication that education is not so significant in developing business skills or experience. This observation has been supported by the emergence of business in the least expected places-with lowly educated people.
Technology then comes in to bridge the gap between regions and cultures and linking businesses with clients at very minimal costs.