TStartup Heatmap’s latest study (2020) on women entrepreneurs in Europe revealed that only 15.5% of founders or co-founders are women, with female entrepreneurs receiving 38% less funding than their male counterparts when starting out under the same conditions. Even in cities with strong support ecosystems, fewer than one in five start-up founders are women. Although women make up 52% of the total European population, only 34% of the EU’s self-employed and 30% of young entrepreneurs are women (WEbarometer Report, 2021). Despite a growing number of gender equality plans in companies and public institutions, these statistics prove that we are still a long way from achieving true gender equality in entrepreneurship.

What do we mean by gender?

Gender refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female, and with the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as between women and men. These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and learned through socialization processes (Definition by the European Institute for Gender Equality – EIGE).

Gender mainstreaming in our society has been adopted internationally as a strategy for achieving full gender equality.