New research highlights the growing enterprise gender gap in the West Midlands » Communities » 24dash.com

Creating the conditions that allow women to start and grow their business, exploit their ideas and ensuring they have access to high quality support is vital if the West Midlands is going to bridge a widening gender gap when it comes to entrepreneurial activity.

The rallying cry - made by the Women’s Enterprise Centre of Expertise (WECOE) - comes after the release of a groundbreaking new report by Professor Mark Hart and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) UK team which reveals significant differences in the number of women taking part in early stage activity when compared to men.

Only 3.9% of females in the region are involved in starting up a business compared to 8.9% of men and this gap is even more pronounced when looking at levels of established company ownership.

The report also reveals a different set of entrepreneurial attitudes, with women less likely to feel they have the necessary start-up skills, know an entrepreneur they can seek advice from and feel that there are good start-up opportunities in the area.

“This research by GEM is the most up-to-date look at women’s enterprise in the West Midlands and the findings have confirmed what we have known for some time...that the gender gap is holding the region back,” explained Marla Nelson, Director at WECOE.

“We currently estimate that there are 64,000 women involved in new business creation, whereas more than 100,000 men will be launching an enterprise – if we could increase the number of female entrepreneurs to a similar level of their male counterparts we will go a long way to addressing the West Midlands productivity gap.”

She continued: “The evidence is even more worrying when you look at established business ownership, the first time any research has focused on this area of activity. On average, just 2.5% of the female adult population are running a company at least three years-old compared with 8.3% of men – a massive three times more.

“Our role now is to make sure we look at what is causing these trends and come up with some recommendations to help solve these issues.”

The research, which was launched on Women’s Enterprise Day as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, revealed that only 35% of women questioned felt they had the necessary skills to start a business and less than 20% have access to an entrepreneur who could act as a role model.

Furthermore, nearly 40% of females have a fear of failure (compared with 35% of men) and interestingly only 25% of respondents feel there are good opportunities for local start-ups.

Marla went on to add: “Take a man and woman of the same age, same educational status, living in the same household income and of the same ethnic group and there are still differences in their entrepreneurial behaviour due to the marked differences in attitude, proving gender does matter when you look at enterprise in the West Midlands.

“These findings provide strong evidence that we have to look at the way business support is delivered and we need to move to a more holistic approach in developing our female entrepreneurs and established business owners.

“We need to change perceptions and attitudes of women and this could be addressed by better training and education and in the introduction of more female role models that could act as mentors.

Other findings from the GEM research in the region include:

• Business services (24%), retail and hotel trade (19%) and personal/consumer services (19%) are the most common sectors for female start-ups

• Banks and financial institutions are the most popular form of finance for female entrepreneurs (46%)

• Just 3.4% of female entrepreneurs enter into the medium/high technology sectors, compared to 12.5% of men.

Marla concluded: “If we can successfully put in measures that help to bridge the gender gap we will be responsible for creating tens of thousands of jobs and adding billions of pounds to the regional economy. That is simply what we have to aim for.”

WECOE, which is one of four Centres of Expertise created by Advantage West Midlands, will be working with partners and stakeholders to ensure this research is used to influence and inform future enterprise policy for women.