WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS - Narrowing the Gender Gap

WORDS: PAULA FITZSIMONS, National GEM Coordinator

The latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report contains some very heartening news. The number of women involved in setting up new businesses in Ireland is at the highest level recorded for the last five years. As a result of the significant increase in the number of women entrepreneurs, there is now an average of just over 1,000 women setting up new businesses throughout Ireland each month.

The Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan, Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, writing in the foreword to the GEM report welcomed this development and noted that these entrepreneurs are responding to opportunities. “Many of them are motivated by a sense of independence that being their own boss confers. Some will just create jobs for themselves. The majority, however, will become employers. A small number will go on to create large businesses. Each will be contributing in their own way to delivering the strategic, economic, regional, social and personal benefits that are associated with a dynamic entrepreneurial economy.”

In most countries the rate at which women are involved in entrepreneurial activity

remains relatively stable year on year. Against this background, the rate of increase

in entrepreneurial activity that has taken place among women in Ireland is all the

more remarkable.

The welcome increase in the number of women setting up new businesses in Ireland has improved the country’s relative position to the most entrepreneurial countries. For example, while Irish women are still some way behind the women in the United States in terms of their being early stage entrepreneurs, the gap is narrowing.

Read more about Women Entrepreneurs - Narrowing the Gender Gap in the August | September 2008 issue of WMB, on newstands now.