# **2. Female Entrepreneurship and Existing Data Sets**

The lack of comprehensive sex-disaggregated data on business entry and ownership presents a significant obstacle to the global and diversified analysis of female entrepreneurship. Due to insufficient standardized and country-comparable data, the diagnostics of gender gaps in entrepreneurship are limited. This section offers a brief overview of the existing data sets and indicators commonly used to measure female entrepreneurship and analyzes their limitations.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) was launched in 1999 and is now carried out by more than 400 experts on entrepreneurship from over 100 research and academic institutions (Global Entrepreneurship Research Association 2017). The GEM considers the broad definition of entrepreneurship as “any attempt at new business or new venture creation, such as self-employment, a new business organization, or the expansion of an existing business, by an individual, a team of individuals, or an established business” (Reynolds, Hay, and Camp 1999, 3). This definition of entrepreneurship is not limited to a specific type of legal entity. Since 2004, the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association has published biannual reports on women’s entrepreneurship which provide analysis of female entrepreneurs who intend to start and run businesses. The most recent report, for 2015, covers 83 economies. One of the key indicators used is the Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurship Activity (TEA) female and male rates which measure the percentage of the adult population either in the process of starting a business or who have recently started a business (Global Entrepreneurship Research Association 2015, 17). Methodologically, the GEM reports rely heavily on country-level surveys. For the TEA, the GEM collects data with an Adult Population Survey (APS) of at least 2,000 randomly selected adults in each economy. In addition, a National Expert Survey (NES) collects in-depth opinions from at least 36 national experts about the factors that affect the entrepreneurship environment in each economy.

In 2011, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched a gender initiative to strengthen gender equality in three areas: education, employment and entrepreneurship. The OECD broadly defines entrepreneurs as “people who own and work in their own business, including unincorporated businesses and own-account workers” (OECD 2016, 122). The OECD Gender Data Portal provides data on 18 indicators related to female entrepreneurship including the share of female-owned soleproprietor enterprises, earnings gap in self-employment and attitudes toward entrepreneurial risk. However, geographic coverage is limited to the 35 OECD members and partner economies. Furthermore, some indicators do not have comprehensive country coverage. The 2011–2015 data on the share of sole-proprietor enterprises owned by women, for example, are available for only one country (France).

The United Nations launched the Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) project in 2013 to strengthen national systems on gender data collection in critical areas of policy making. As of June 2017, the list of Minimum Set of Gender Indicators contained 52 quantitative indicators and 11 qualitative indicators related to national norms. Two of the indicators measure entrepreneurial activity directly, namely the percentage of women-owned firms (defined by size) and the proportion of workers who are selfemployed. Between 2012 and 2015, EDGE focused on the development of guidelines for the collection of gender indicators based on household surveys. The EDGE pilot project was conducted in only seven _—_ developing economies Georgia, Maldives, Mexico, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Africa and Uganda. Similar to the OECD gender initiative, the EDGE project defines entrepreneurs as “persons who have direct control over an enterprise they own alone or with other individuals” (UNSD 2017).

In recent years, several composite indices of female entrepreneurship have been introduced based on the combination of different sources. Launched in 2015, the Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard is based on sources such as the World Bank’s Global Findex database, the World Bank’s _Women, Business and the Law_ database, the World Economic Forum, Transparency International, the Global 3