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New U.S. GEM Report Underscores Importance of Closing
the Entrepreneurial Gender Gap, according to Kauffman CEO
U.S. entrepreneurial activity held steady in 2002
after dropping sharply in 2001, according to the
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report,
an annual study of entrepreneurship conducted by
Babson College and funded by the Kauffman
Foundation. Carl Schramm, Kauffman’s CEO, said
GEM findings “make a powerful case for
stepping up the best efforts of the Kauffman
Foundation...to get more new entrepreneurs into
the pipeline.”
One finding was an entrepreneurial gender gap--
there are 1.6 men in the U.S. involved in
entrepreneurship for every woman engaged in the
same activity, according to GEM. However, in the
18-24 year-old age bracket, men are 3 times
more likely than women to start or grow
a new business (perhaps, researchers
hypothesized, “because young men might have
self-employed ventures in the construction and
trade industries, which require less education and
experience to successfully launch”).
GEM data also demonstrated a strong correlation
between entrepreneurship, education and
job creation--30 % of entrepreneurs with less than
a high school education expect to remain selfemployed
over the next 5 years, while 35 % of the
most highly educated entrepreneurs expect to
employ 20 or more people over that period.
Because individuals with a college degree are
more likely to engage in entrepreneurial
businesses that create new jobs, Kauffman
believes that entrepreneurial training should be
more fully integrated into the collegiate setting.
Given that 57 % of all bachelor’s degrees
in the U.S. were awarded to women in 2001--a
trend that is expected to continue--the Foundation
favors an expanded focus on women’s
entrepreneurship, including on young women
pursuing college degrees.
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According to Schramm, GEM underscores the
importance of a number of ongoing Foundation
initiatives, and provides a road map for other
needed steps, including several impacting women
entrepreneurs:
• Improving access to capital--”Informal
investments by family and friends are what get the
large majority of start-up entrepreneurs off the
ground. We need to find ways to incent more
people to invest in these young businesses.... Accessing capital is especially hard
for women and minority entrepreneurs, and the
Foundation is exploring new ways to help
level the playing field.”
• Promoting more entrepreneurship by women--The
new GEM findings underscore the importance of
uncovering the reasons behind the lower rate of
entrepreneurial activity among women.
For further details, see
http://www.emkf.org/pages/372.cfm.
“We are committed to undertaking major
research and convening a national dialog
to determine what can be done to close
the gender gap that separates men and
women today when it comes to starting
and building businesses. In the long run,
this may be one of the most important
things the Foundation can do to ensure
that entrepreneurship in America is as
healthy as possible in the coming
decades.”
Carl Schramm, President and CEO, Ewing Marion
Kauffman Foundation
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The Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor research program is an annual
assessment of the national level of
entrepreneurial activity. It was initiated in
1999 with 10 countries, expanded to 21 in
the year 2000, with 29 countries in 2001
and 37 countries in 2002. It expects 30
national teams in 2003. Over 120 scholars
and researchers are actively participating in
the GEM project. The research program,
based on a harmonized assessment of the
level of national entrepreneurial activity for
all participating countries, involves
exploration of the role of entrepreneurship
in national economic growth. Global
comparisons, national reports, and special
topic reports based on the annual data
collection cycle are available online at
http://www.gemconsortium.org/
About Tsunami
Project Tsunami, Incorporated
(www.projecttsunami.org), is a non-profit
corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA,
that is a global accelerator for women’s
entrepreneurship. It was designed to help
create a tidal wave of economic
opportunities in the U.S. and abroad, by
identifying and connecting key women
entrepreneurial leaders, facilitating the
sharing of best practices across countries,
and helping to link effective programs with
resources. It uses 21st Century technology
to make a clearinghouse of resources and
best practices available to its powerful
global network of leaders and multipliers,
who then disseminate this information
widely to their members and stakeholders.
The organization began its work with a
major seed grant from the Ewing Marion
Kauffman Foundation, which funds
innovative programs that foster
entrepreneurship.
Tsunami is an outgrowth of two major
international conferences on women-owned
small and medium enterprises (WSMEs) put
on by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) in
Paris in 1997 and 2000, for which
Tsunami’s CEO Virginia Littlejohn served as
Senior Advisor. Project Tsunami influences
policies, practices and programs that
expand the WSME sector by concentrating
on 5 core strategies:
1) WSME research, data and statistics;
2) Entrepreneurial education and training;
3) Access to finance; 4) Access to networks
and to corporate, government and
international markets; and
5) Technology as an entrepreneurial
enabler. We also are analyzing how these
five areas impact high-growth women
entrepreneurs.
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