As we close out 2011, I did not want to forget to applaud the welcome attention this year brought to maximizing the entrepreneurial potential of women. A recent report, Overcoming the Gender Gap: Women Entrepreneurs as Economic Drivers, showed that despite the fact that about 46 percent of the workforce and more than 50 percent of college students are female, they represent only about 35 percent of startup business owners and tend to experience less growth and prosperity compared to firms started by men. Further, women take fewer steps to position themselves to start high-growth companies. At the university innovation level, female faculty patent their research at only about 40 percent of the rate of their male colleagues, and they tend to rely on formal university conduits to commercialize their research, rather than reaching out to private industry.
As Lesa Mitchell, Kauffman Foundation vice president for advancing innovation, and the paper's author, pointed out, "Women's entrepreneurship is an economic issue, not a gender-equity issue." And thanks to organizations like Astia and events like the Kauffman Foundation’s FastTrac Global Women's Summit in Kansas City last month and the We Own it Summit in London in June, the next 10 years are being called the 'Decade of the Woman Entrepreneur'. This and other summits in 2011 brought together bright minds to address the motivations, funding issues, metrics and solutions for women's participation in high-growth entrepreneurship. With more data now available, at such events we can finally start separating more myths from reality.
To read the full, original article click on this link: 2011s Welcome Spotlight on Highgrowth Womens Entrepreneurship - Entrepreneurship.org
