Policy Brief on Women's Entrepreneurship

The European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – OECD (INSME Moral Sponsor) have recently released a policy brief on women’s entrepreneurship analyzing  the gender gap in entrepreneurship, the differences between male- and female- owned businesses, and the challenges that female entrepreneurs face when they decide to start a business.

Women have an unexploited entrepreneurial talent and policy makers have to unlock this potential. New policy approaches to support women entrepreneurs are starting to emerge and the policy brief highlights those that provide more support for growth-oriented women entrepreneurs through:

• dedicated business incubators and business accelerator programmes and
• the creation of an infrastructure for risk capital.

In order to reduce the gender gap, the institutional conditions need to be improved. It is important to promote women entrepreneurs as role models and ensure that the education system is gender-neutral and does not discourage women from going into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The policy brief also suggests the adoption of more targeted actions ensuring that family, social and tax policies do not discriminate against entrepreneurship by women. 

The full policy brief is downloadable here.