Women’s entrepreneurship has expanded over the past two decades, but the latest figures show a mixed picture. Startup activity and established ownership have risen in many countries, while women remain underrepresented in formal ownership, board seats, venture capital, and technology-heavy sectors. The statistics below separate global estimates from country-specific and U.S. measurements.
Contents
- Global startup and ownership trends
- What the World Bank data shows
- Business closures and reasons
- Innovation, technology, and research scale
- Women-owned businesses in the United States
- Finance and the opportunity gap
Global startup and ownership trends
The GEM 2023/24 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report found that women’s startup activity rose from 6.1% in 2001–2005 to 10.4% in 2021–2023 across the 30 participating countries compared. In 2023, one in 10 women started a new business, compared with one in eight men. The report also measured a rise in women’s established business ownership, from 4.2% to 5.9% across the same comparison.
Perceptions changed as well. Women’s perceived business opportunities rose 79% over the two decades covered by the report, while perceptions of startup skills rose 27%. At the same time, fear of failure among women increased by more than half over that period. These measures describe reported perceptions and attitudes, not guaranteed business outcomes.
The GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report again reported that one in 10 women started a new business in 2024, compared with one in eight men. Women’s startup rates increased in 19 of the 47 countries that participated in both the 2023 and 2024 surveys. In Jordan and Morocco, women’s startup rates doubled between those two survey years.
Women were at parity with men or higher in 18 of 51 countries for startups bringing new innovations to market. However, women were less than half as likely as men to be active in the information and communications technology sector. Women were also 11% less likely than men to see benefits from artificial intelligence for their business.
What the World Bank data shows
The World Bank Entrepreneurship Database’s eighth edition covers 117 economies and the 2014–2024 period. Compared with the seventh edition, it added 20 countries with sex-disaggregated entrepreneurship tracking. Its indicators include business ownership, directors, sole proprietors, and startup procedures.
In 2024, women comprised roughly one in four owners and directors of newly created limited liability companies, while women represented more than one-third of new sole proprietorships. The World Bank’s related analysis still identifies women as underrepresented in ownership and governance roles.
The gap between women’s share of sole proprietors and their share of the adult population varied by income group. In high-income countries, the sole-proprietor share was 11 percentage points lower than women’s adult-population share. The gap was 12 percentage points in upper-middle-income countries, 18 percentage points in lower-middle-income countries, and 19 percentage points in low-income economies.
Board representation also varied substantially among the piloted limited liability company data. Women averaged 27.8% of board members across the pilot countries. Thailand recorded 45.9% women board members, followed by Montenegro at 41.9%. Pakistan recorded 13.6%, while Qatar recorded 14.8%.
| Selected World Bank entrepreneurship measure | Reported figure | Period or scope |
|---|---|---|
| Female sole proprietors in Jamaica | 58% | 2024 |
| Female sole proprietors in Uruguay | 50% | 2023 and 2024 |
| Female sole proprietors in Rwanda | 34% to 55% | 2014 to 2024 |
| Women board members across pilot countries | 27.8% | Piloted LLC data |
| Women board members in Thailand | 45.9% | Piloted LLC data |
| Women board members in Pakistan | 13.6% | Piloted LLC data |
Thailand was the only economy globally with a higher share of female sole proprietors than male sole proprietors throughout the 2014–2024 period. Jamaica reached 58% female sole proprietors in 2024. Uruguay reached 50% and returned to gender parity in both 2023 and 2024. Rwanda’s female sole-proprietor share rose from 34% in 2014 to 55% in 2024.
Business closures and reasons
The GEM 2024/2025 report found that 3.4% of women globally reported closing a business in 2024, compared with 3.8% of men. It also reported that women were 47% more likely than men to close a business for family or personal reasons. The comparison concerns the likelihood of reporting that reason, not the total number of businesses closed.
Among women who closed businesses, 29.4% cited a business that was not profitable, 21.0% cited family or personal reasons, and 16.2% cited problems getting finance. Among men who closed businesses, 30.3% cited a business that was not profitable, while 16.1% cited problems getting finance. Another opportunity, such as a job, retirement, or school, was cited by 17.1% of men who closed businesses.
These figures put personal circumstances and financing alongside profitability as distinct reported reasons. They also show why a single business-closure rate does not explain the same underlying experience for women and men.
Innovation, technology, and research scale
The startup figures show both progress and uneven participation. Women reached parity with men or exceeded men in startup innovation activity in 18 of 51 countries, yet women remained less than half as likely as men to be active in ICT. The report additionally found an 11% lower likelihood that women would see AI benefits for their business.
The GEM 2024/2025 report drew on 161,528 adults across 51 countries. GEM says its broader research program includes more than 25 years of data, conducts more than 150,000 interviews annually, and covers more than 120 economies. It also reports a network of more than 370 entrepreneurship researchers and more than 150 academic institutions.
Investment patterns are also gendered. Women were 2.5 times more likely to invest in women than men investors were. Even so, two-thirds of informal investments went to men. The figures suggest that women investors can be an important source of capital for women founders, while the broader informal-investment pool remains tilted toward men.
Women-owned businesses in the United States
The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 Annual Business Survey estimated that around 1.3 million U.S. employer firms were owned by women, representing 22.3% of the total. Those women-owned employer businesses had an estimated $2.1 trillion in receipts in 2022, employed 11.4 million people, and had $508.5 billion in annual payroll.
The Census Bureau’s 2021 Annual Business Survey, using 2020 data, counted around 1.24 million women-owned employer businesses, or 21.4% of the total. Those businesses had an estimated $1.9 trillion in receipts, 10.9 million employees, and $432.1 billion in annual payroll in 2020. In 2019 ABS data, about 1.1 million U.S. businesses were owned by women, or 19.9% of all businesses.
Nonemployer businesses provide a wider view of solo and very small business activity. In 2020, women owned 41.1% of U.S. nonemployer businesses, equal to 11.2 million firms. Those women-owned nonemployer businesses had $307.9 billion in receipts. Across all owners, the United States had 27.2 million nonemployer businesses with $1.3 trillion in receipts in 2020.
When employer and nonemployer data were combined for 2020, women owned 12.4 million U.S. businesses and women-owned businesses had $2.2 trillion in receipts. The U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2024 women-ownership statistics also said women owned more than 12 million businesses and that women-owned businesses employed over 10.7 million workers.
The SBA’s 2024 statistics cite 2019 figures of 12,338,407 women-owned U.S. businesses and 10,791,948 workers employed by women-owned businesses. A 2023 SBA statement said women-owned firms employ more than 10 million workers and add more than $2 trillion to U.S. gross domestic product each year. The same SBA statement said women-owned employer firms were growing at more than three times the rate of their male counterparts.
Other SBA summaries of 2019 data reported that 21% of employer businesses had majority female ownership. In that summary, women-owned employer businesses employed 9.4 million workers and generated $1.5 trillion in total annual receipts. Because these figures come from different releases and business definitions, they should not be merged into one single estimate.
Finance and the opportunity gap
The OECD reports that women entrepreneurs are about half as likely as men entrepreneurs to report borrowing from a bank to start, operate, or expand a business. Businesses owned or led by women receive only about 2% of total venture capital investments. The OECD also says women business owners often pay higher interest rates and provide more collateral when they receive loans.
The World Bank’s Gender Data Portal says women face more restrictions in accessing finance and less favorable terms, and that women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises represent a small portion of formal SMEs in emerging markets. The World Bank and Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative report says women-owned formal SMEs in developing countries are shut out by financial institutions or unable to receive adequate financial services 70% of the time. It estimates a nearly $300 billion annual credit deficit for formal women-owned SMEs.
The same initiative says women-owned entities represent just over 30% of formal, registered businesses worldwide. A World Bank feature on the WE Finance Code puts the global financing gap for women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises at $1.7 trillion.
The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2026 event page says removing barriers to women’s economic participation could raise global output by 15% to 20%. It says the related report draws on data from 190 economies and benchmarks 10 dimensions of women’s economic life, including entrepreneurship. These are estimates and report-based projections, so they should be read as potential economic effects rather than measured output already achieved.