Will 2014 Be A Breakout Year For Women Entrepreneurs?

By Tom Lowery, business2community.com, 31-01-2014
For centuries, women have been leaders in many countries around the world. Despite this, in the USA women still haven’t quite managed to completely shatter what some have called “the glass ceiling”  when it comes to leadership and entrepreneurship. But the gap is decreasing rapidly.

According to an article in the April 15, 2013 issue of Forbes:

• Women entrepreneurs lead one in five startups around the globe.
• The ratio of female founders to male soared 30% over the last year and a half, reports Gust, the Manhattan-based global platform for early-stage investing, which collects data on more than 200,000 companies, angel investors and venture capitalists.
• The percentage is slightly higher than one in five (22.8%) in the U.S.
• Led by Belgium, France; and Spain, even sclerotic Europe is producing women-run companies, now 16% of the total but a 45% jump in the overall ratio during the last 18 months.

Until things slowly changed over the last century women were thought to be “too emotional” to be of any use as leaders. Today’s research often suggests that women now make better leaders than men. The problem with most of these polls, including those conducted by Pew Research and The Zenger Foundation, is that they appear to rely almost exclusively on opinions and perceptions, which are often at odds with the facts.
But a recent study by the University of Rochester, originally published in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, appears to have debunked both perceptions that either men or women are superior when it comes to most things. In summary, the study found that:

• No matter how strange and mysterious your partner may seem, gender is probably only a small part of the problem.
• Sex persists as the most pervasively used to distinguish humans characteristics.
• It’s not at all unusual for men to be empathic and women to be good at math.
• Variability within each sex and overlap between the sexes is so extensive that the authors conclude it would be inaccurate to use personality types, attitudes, and psychological indicators as a vehicle for sorting men and women.
• Although emphasizing inherent differences between the sexes strikes a chord with many, such simplistic frameworks can be harmful in the context of relationships.
• Gay and lesbian couples have much the same problems relating to each other that heterosexual couples do.>>>