India and China Register Few Female Entrepreneurs

According to a study carried out in 49 countries and territories by the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, female entrepreneurs are especially common in developing nations like Guatemala and Togo as well as in developed countries on the Arabian Peninsular, like Saudi Arabia, Oman or Kuwait, and in high and middle-income countries the Americas, for example in Panama, Chile and the United States. Many developed nations in Europe have very low rates of female entrepreneurs, according to the study, as do countries in Asia. Here, low-income as well as high-income nations are seeing few female founders.

Entrepreneurial activity in low-income nations is sometimes called necessity-driven entrepreneurship, which can be caused by a lack of formal employment opportunities in a country, while in developed nations, innovation-driven entrepreneurialism coexists with well-developed formal job markets. Yet, within both types of economies, big differences exist between the rates of female entrepreneurs. While more than 28 percent of adult women are engaged in entrepreneurial activity in Guatemala and around 25 percent are starting their own businesses in Togo (slightly above the rate for men), fewer women are entrepreneurs in low-income countries like Egypt (3.7 percent) or Morocco (3.1 percent). Here, it was more common for men to be entrepreneurs (around 5-9 percent each).

Some European countries fare extraordinarily badly, with Poland (1.6 percent) having the lowest rate of female entrepreneurship in the ranking ahead of aforementioned Morocco, Egypt and Greece (3.4 percent) as well as Japan (3.6 percent). Compared to other low-income countries, India only registered a low-ish rate of around 11 percent female entrepreneurs and China saw even fewer at 5 percent - comparable with the rate of Germany. However, the gap between the sexes was smaller in India and China than in Germany, where 50 percent more men are entrepreneurs than women. The rate of male entrepreneurs is 50 to 100 percent higher than that of female entrepreneurs in most developed countries as well as in some developing ones.

A closer gap in male and female entrepreneurs can however also point to less equality in the job market. In South Korea, a country with a very traditional corporate culture, female entrepreneurship rates have soared recently as a response to unequal career opportunities for women. The rate of female entrepreneurs exceeded the male rate in Togo in 2022 (25.4 percent compared to 22.6 percent) and Qatar (11 percent/10.6 percent) as well as Indonesia (9.2 percent/7.0 percent) and Poland (1.6 percent/1.5 percent).