Family Commitments Hold Back Female Entrepreneurs

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, family commitments, as well as the pandemic, pose bigger hurdles for women entrepreneurs than their male counterparts. In a survey carried out in 49 countries and territories, 18 percent of female entrepreneurs who quit or exited a business did so for personal and family reasons, compared to just 12.6 percent of men. Likewise, 20 percent of female founders whose business went under or was sold in 2022 credited the coronavirus pandemic, while just 16.4 percent of men did the same. While women own smaller businesses more often that were more impacted by Covid-19, family reasons could be influencing another category in the survey, as women in particular exited the workforce during the pandemic as child care became a massive problem.

Exits for personal and family reasons were most common in North America, where a share of female entrepreneurs twice as high as that of male ones quit because of these reasons. The rate was also especially high in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Quits for the aforementioned reasons affected female entrepreneurs from all income levels more than men, while the number of pandemic quits was lowest in the high-income bracket and highest in the middle-income one.

Other common reasons entrepreneurs gave for quitting were their businesses not being profitable and issues with financing. Women and men were impacted by these problems equally. Less commonly named as reasons to exit one's business were tax & regulations, personal incidents, the opportunity to sell the business or to pursue another position/project as well as it being a planned exit or a retirement. Men were also more likely to name another opportunity than women, especially in middle and high-income countries, while fewer women in low-income nations named selling their business.