Innovative entrepreneurship is a fundamental pillar for business progress and Spain lost more than 5 billion euros in 2023 due to the gender gap in this sector. The gender gap in access to capital is a persistent challenge in Europe, with only 7% of European fundraising going to teams founded exclusively by women, while companies with at least one female founder or co-founder captured 18%. These are the data that emerge from the study “Opportunity cost of the gender gap in innovative entrepreneurship”, developed by Closingap.
These differences limit opportunities for women entrepreneurs, and also slows down the potential for growth and diversity within the country’s business ecosystem. And, according to the Closingap study, the gender gap in innovative entrepreneurship cost the Spanish economy more than 5 billion euros in 2023, representing 0.43% of GDP. In order to eradicate the gender gap in the business ecosystem, the most important thing is to know the causes that led to it and which have led to such a reduced presence of women in economics and finance.
Causes of inequality
Inequalities in entrepreneurship It has no biological causes explain it, but it is obvious that all are the product of constructions, conventions or social practices which are part of the collective imagination and which are already established throughout society. In this way, the stereotypes and expectations of society as a whole about the role that men and women should play are present and part of the decision-making processes when considering a professional future.
To try to compensate for the imposed roles, it is a matter of It is necessary to identify the causes that generate inequalities, among which are the underrepresentation of women in education levels, the low presence of independent women, even more intensified in the technology sector and startups. And the lower volume of private funding for women-led businesses, such as European Union funding rounds, also comes into play; as well as the lack of measures and actions to correct the inequalities that still exist between women and men.
15.2% independent
All these factors directly contribute and have consequences in the lack of innovative entrepreneurship on the part of women, since the aforementioned causes materialize in a multitude of areas related to the choice and exercise of a profession and continue to materialize on the labor market. This explains why in Spain there are twice as many self-employed workers as there are self-employed workers.
In 2023, more than 3.2 million self-employed workers will be registered in Spain, representing 15.2% of the country’s total working population. Of all, only 35.8% of self-employed workers were womenwhich represents more than 1,150,000 people. These data highlight one of the distinctive attributes of self-employment in Spain: the relative low presence of women.
According to the different socio-demographic characteristics, we observe that in the age group of 35 to 55 there is a significant concentration of self-employed workers.
However, in this section, For every independent man, there are 0.6 women in the same situation. Indeed, it is the youngest, under 35, who have the least pronounced gender gap, with a male/female ratio of 0.7 points.
In all these decision-making that surrounds the entrepreneurial ecosystem, education plays a determining role in reducing the gender gap in the business sector, since the higher the educational level of the person employed, the more inequalities are low.
SO, The ratio between self-employed men and women with a university degree is 0.7, unlike those with a high school diploma, which is 0.4.
This lack of entrepreneurship is also because women tend to major more frequently in fields such as humanities and health sciences, while men prefer fields such as business, engineering and other technical disciplines.
SO, 48% of men who decide to start their own business do so because they have always had it in mindwhile 42% of women realize it because they detect a specific need in the market and decide to take advantage of this opportunity, so it is not a serial business (which they do more than once ), but rather of a specific company. event that arises from an opportunity in the market, while 63% of men who decide to start a business do not focus on a single business and try to look for other avenues to continue investing.
Educational Trends
All this is directly linked to education received, because educational trends have a direct impact on the gender distribution within the economic sector and, therefore, it is observed that the gender gap between self-employed workers in sectors such as Education and health tend to favor women. And conversely, in sectors such as industry, transport and activities linked to information and communication technologies, over-representation leans in favor of men.
It is therefore essential to have representation of women in the entrepreneurship sector to promote investment and ensure that it is considered from an early age as an option for the future.
10% of startups founded by women
The gender gap extends to all areas of entrepreneurship, whether in the initiative of creating a new business or in the presence of women in senior positions within companies. This situation is repeated in the startupssince those that were founded exclusively by women only represent 10%, even if This trend has continued to grow over the past three years.since in 2022 they represented 6%. In contrast, mixed teams (in which there are both men and women among the founders) have slowly declined over this same period, from 35% to 31%, while men’s teams remain at 59 %, includes the “Entrepreneurship Map”. prepared by the South Summit.
Thus, this gap is also seen in the presence of women in management positions, since 18% of founders do not hold any management position within their company to start upa figure which drops to 11% in the case of men. In those created exclusively by men, 100% of CEOs are men, while in those startups Founded solely by women, the management includes 8% men, 4 percentage points more than in the rest of Europe. On the other hand, if we talk about startups With a mixed founding team, the proportion of male and female CEOs is 66% compared to 34%, a figure similar to that of recent years.
