WOMEN entrepreneurs are expected to play a more pivotal role in global business and leadership, but as of now, they still have to reach their full potential, a study has revealed.
Global technology firm Dell Inc. has conducted a research analysis—the Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard 2015—to identify the potential of businesswomen in the economy and found that more than 70 percent of the 31 countries involved scored below 50 percent, showing a significant growth gap between female- and male-owned businesses worldwide.
“The scorecard provides the data-driven insights we need to move the broader conversation from awareness to action and allow female entrepreneurs around the world to reach their full potential,” said Karen Quintos, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Dell.
Based on the results, woman entrepreneurs have a high rate of business opportunities in the United States, Canada and Australia.
With an overall 71 percent score, the US ranked first due to its favorable business environment and women’s job mobility in the private sector. While the superpower nation scored the highest in the business-environment segment overall, only 13 percent of start-ups with women on their executive team and just 3 percent of those with women CEOs received venture capital funding last year.
China, Brazil, Malaysia and Nigeria have women holding 5 percent of the CEO positions of the largest publicly traded companies. In countries like Poland, Jamaica and Russia, women make up 35 percent or more of senior management. France is the lone nation with women occupying 30 percent of corporate board seats.
Businesswomen must consider government intervention, as public procurement entails that gross domestic product of developing countries is above 30 percent to 40 percent, while 10 percent to 15 percent belongs to developed countries. Apart from the US, South Africa exercise gender public-procurement policies to promote growth-oriented woman entrepreneurship. Since gendered data collection by the government is critical to benchmark change, the US, Sweden, France and Germany perform such annually.
Meanwhile, Mexico tracks gendered data for all state-funded entrepreneurship programs, as Chile does it and also a yearly gendered business census.
Women in nearly all of the countries surveyed are all positive that they can match a man’s skills to put up a business.
Nevertheless, 68 percent of the nation-participants has women seeing less opportunity to start a business than men.
Female entrepreneurs need equitable access to resources, but there’s still a wide disparity among countries when it comes to availing themselves fundamental resources, such as education, Internet, bank accounts and small and medium enterprise training programs.
(With Paulene San Miguel)