The majority of the countries where male early-stage entrepreneurial activity rates exceed that of females by five percentage points or more belong to the high-income group.
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2024/2025, which measures entrepreneurial activity across 120 different economies, has shown that female entrepreneurs are particularly prevalent in middle-income countries such as Ecuador, Guatemala, Jordan, and Thailand, as well as in the developed nation of Saudi Arabia.
In 27% (14 out of 51) economies surveyed for this year’s GEM, the number of new male entrepreneurs exceeds the same indicator for businesswomen by at least five percentage points. Nine out of those 14 countries are labelled as high-income economies. In most countries, regardless of an income level, men are more likely than women to start a business and are significantly more likely to own an established one. These disparities tend to widen as income levels rise.
Furthermore, in many countries, women entrepreneurs still face significant barriers to accessing essential resources for business success. Experts rate women’s access to these resources as inadequate in nearly half of the economies studied (25 out of 51), including 10 high-income nations.
High-income countries in the Americas, such as Canada, Chile, and the U.S., have higher female entrepreneurship rates than many European and East Asian nations. In lower and middle-income countries, entrepreneurship is often necessity-driven due to limited formal job opportunities, while in developed nations, it coexists with strong job markets. Therefore, the gender entrepreneurship gap generally tends to be smaller in developing countries than developed ones, where 50 to 100% more males are entrepreneurs than females.
However, rates vary widely — even among middle-income countries that typically have higher female entrepreneurship levels, Ecuador sees 32% of women engaged in entrepreneurship, while, in comparison, Egypt and China report much lower figures (2.6% and 4.9%, respectively). Some European nations, like Poland (2.3%) and Romania (3.7%), have some of the lowest rates globally. Interestingly, in some regions, a smaller gender gap in entrepreneurship may reflect job market inequalities, as seen in South Korea and Gulf nations. There, women strive to start their businesses in attempts to bypass restrictions put on them as employees.
As revealed by the GEM’s last year report, women entrepreneurs are more likely to focus their businesses on local markets. In the Middle East and Africa, 64% of international market startups had male leaders. In North America, the number was slightly higher – 66%. In Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, men led 60% of international startups. However, exceptions were registered in the countries of Central and East Asia. There, internationally focused startups are in equal parts led by men and women, while 57% of those businesses concentrating on local markets are headed by men. In China, 73% of entrepreneurs focused internationally were female.
As for other gender-based peculiarities of entrepreneurship, women are overrepresented in the fields of wholesale retail, government and social services. Female entrepreneurs are also still 50% more likely than men to quit their startup for family or personal reasons. The fact that women make different choices about how to balance work and family is also one of the major reasons for the gender pay gap in the employed workers segment.
In 49 out of 51 economies studied by GEM, most new business owners take social and environmental impacts into account when planning their business decisions. Only in Morocco and Cyprus did fewer than half of entrepreneurs report doing so.
In 40 economies, more than half of early-stage entrepreneurs even said they value sustainability over profit or business expansion. At the same time, in both high- and middle-income countries, women entrepreneurs are more likely than men to adopt sustainability strategies and prioritize environmental and social responsibility over financial growth.
As for the general entrepreneurship trends, both men and women are becoming more eager to start their own businesses and confident of their success. However, many beginner entrepreneurs may miss prospective opportunities, as there is still considerable lack of awareness and uncertainty about how important artificial intelligence (AI) will become to new businesses in the next three years. Less than 30% of respondents consider AI very important for a startup and the vast majority of people have no idea about this technology’s significance.
