Source: Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Extract from press release
Research shows that startup companies – particularly high-growth startups – are the most fruitful source of new U.S. jobs and offer the economy's best hope for recovery. However, despite the fact that about 46 percent of the workforce and more than 50 percent of college students are female, and that women have risen to top positions in corporate and university hierarchies, they represent only about 35 percent of startup business owners. Their firms also tend to experience less growth and prosperity than do firms started by men.
"Overcoming the Gender Gap: Women Entrepreneurs as Economic Drivers," a new paper from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, explores the reasons behind lower business startup rates among women and proposes actions that would help to realize the promise of female entrepreneurs in escalating the economy
"There are plenty of highly qualified women in science and technology – industries from which the majority of high-growth companies are born," said Lesa Mitchell, Kauffman Foundation vice president, advancing innovation, and the paper's author. "More women are entering these fields than ever before. However, while women have broken through the glass ceiling, they seem to encounter ‘glass walls' that keep them from venturing out of big companies or structured academic settings to launch their own firms at the same rate men do."
In fact, early in the startup process, women take fewer steps to position themselves to start high-growth companies, according to "Gender Differences in Patenting in the Academic Life Sciences," a landmark study released in 2006 that tracked the careers of more than 4,000 life science research faculty at U.S. universities over 30 years.
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Photo from Creative Commons: Flickr: mctrent
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