Statistics in Focus: Population and social conditions. The entrepreneurial gap between women and men.

Abstract

Promoting entrepreneurship and self-employment is one of the four Pillars of the Employment Guidelines which lie at the heart of the European Employment Strategy. Although the question of women's self-employment is not explicitly addressed in the actual Guidelines themselves, it is explicitly mentioned in the preamble to the fourth Pillar, that of ensuring Equal Opportunities for women and men, one of the concerns of which is 'to give particular attention to obstacles which hinder women who wish to set up new businesses or become self-employed'. In practice, the number of women who are self-employed across the European Union is very much smaller than that of men and the number of women entrepreneurs, or those with employees, smaller still.