Around the globe and online, entrepreneurship is a male-typed activity — Let's change that!

Entrepreneurship is an important strategy for empowering women around the world. When women start businesses, families, communities, and countries benefit from women’s greater social and economic participation. 

Yet, women face many barriers to launching and growing their own businesses. Around the globe, entrepreneurship is considered a male-typed activity - something that only men do. While men are encouraged to be providers, women can be actively discouraged from earning money and going out on their own. Cultural beliefs that prioritize women’s role in the family make it difficult for women to work at all, let alone start their own business ventures. Women also have great difficulty accessing educational and training opportunities that provide the knowledge and skills necessary for entrepreneurship. And compared to their male counterparts, women are often less likely to think they have the requisite abilities to be an entrepreneur. 

As a result of these kinds of structural and cultural barriers, women are significantly less likely than men to start businesses and face greater challenges in growing their businesses, which has real implications for economic growth and the persistence of gender inequality.

With the emergence of Information Communications Technologies (ICTs), the digital economy may enable women to overcome some of these barriers by lowering the cost of entry, providing access to online training, and enabling women to better promote and market their businesses. Despite the growth in digital tools and their potential to positively impact women and entrepreneurship, research on gender and the digital marketplace is limited.

To better understand what’s happening with online Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs), Facebook has partnered with the World Bank and the OECD to survey SMEs with an active Facebook business page. Launched in February 2016, the Future of Business survey collects data monthly on the perceptions, challenges and outlook of SMEs in 33 countries. To date, more than 60 million SMEs have created a page and over 140,000 of these Facebook page owners have taken the survey. This survey, which focuses on the emerging population of businesses that are already embracing digital, provides an illuminating first look at similarities and differences between male-led and female-led online businesses.   

Reflecting trends in entrepreneurship more generally, the survey found that on average, women run firms comprise a smaller share of the overall population of survey respondents (31% women vs. 45% men). However, there is a great range among countries. In Bangladesh, women-run firms make up only 5% of the sample. But in Canada, the U.S, the U.K., Australia, and the Philippines, women-run firms exceed the percentage of men-run firms, making up more than 40% of the respondents. 

Women-run firms also tend to be smaller and younger. Over two thirds of women-run businesses are sole proprietors compared to just half of men-run businesses. One quarter of women-run businesses are less than one year old, whereas only 19% of men run-businesses are this new. In contrast, male respondents are more likely to have long established businesses. Twenty eight percent of male-run SMEs reported being more than ten years old, compared to just 18% of women-run SMEs. 

Women-run firms are concentrated in female dominated areas that tend to be more competitive and less lucrative like retail, wholesale, and personal services. In contrast, men-run firms are more likely to be in media and IT. 

Perhaps reflecting these different areas of business, women-led firms are less likely than men-led firms to engage in international trade. And to the degree that firms participate in export, women are much more likely to export to individual consumers. In contrast, male-run online businesses are more likely to export to other businesses. 

More than men, women turn to entrepreneurship as a way of addressing work/life conflict, especially in countries that lack supportive work and family policies. Having their own business can enable women to have more control over their schedule and greater flexibility to take care of family responsibilities. Yet, the need to balance their business with family can mean that women have smaller growth visions for their businesses. 

Reflecting the smaller scale of women-run SMEs, women-led online businesses reported that their business makes up a smaller share of their personal income than for men-led businesses. Among sole proprietor, women-run businesses the largest share (42%) report that “I make a little/some money with this business.” In contrast, the largest share of sole proprietor, men-led businesses (38%) report that “all my income is based on this business.”   

In regard to business challenges, male-led companies seem more concerned, especially about retaining/recruiting skilled employees and securing finance for expansion. To the degree that male-run SMEs are larger operations that are eager for growth, talent and capital investments are salient issues. 

When it comes to business confidence, there are real similarities between men and women-run SMEs. Both women and men have similar levels of present (39% vs. 42%) and future (60% vs. 58%) business confidence levels. This is a positive signal that in the digital marketplace, both men and women have optimistic outlooks about their business opportunities.

Another positive takeaway is that women are using more of the digital tools for more purposes than do men, which provides evidence that ICTs are critically important to the future of women and entrepreneurship.

Over the next year, Facebook, in partnership with the World Bank and OEDC, will be further exploring gender and the digital marketplace to gain deeper insights into how women can leverage the mobile, digital economy. 

Today, on International Women’s Day, I’d love to hear from women entrepreneurs around the globe who are running businesses in the digital marketplace. What areas are you finding success using digital tools? What remains a challenge? What kind of training opportunities are you seeking? Are women-run businesses helping and learning from each other? How and in what ways has the mobile, digital economy changed your life and that of your community?

Follow Marianne on Twitter @Coopermarianne and like her on Facebook For more on how families are coping in an uncertain age see Marianne’s book Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times. 

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