Female Founders – Femtrepreneurs

3 out of 20 startups are founded by women

The proportion of female to male entrepreneurs in Europe is 15.5%. This is highlighted in a new report from Startup Heatmap. The reason for this low percentage is a lack of awareness of female entrepreneurship and the insufficient promotion of the female startup scene.

Women can assert themselves in professional life

It is well known that entering a male-dominated scene is very challenging. But women prove to be very efficient and hard-working. Today, the proportion of women in Swiss executive offices is still low, but individual women know how to shine. So the main question remains: Why have the numbers remained low?

The study we looked at analysed European ecosystems on the basis of three different data sets to gather information on three main aspects:

the level of awareness of female entrepreneurship over time
the representation of women entrepreneurs in European technology centres
women in accelerators and the early development of their business

What does Switzerland do?

According to this study, Zurich also fails to design events with female components. Zurich’s tech hubs, for example, only have a 15% share of women. In the future, more events in Switzerland should be designed exclusively for “Femtrepreneurs” in order to provide a platform to promote them. According to the study, accelerators, in particular, should promote female entrepreneurship, as women apparently take longer to join an accelerator programme than their male counterparts.

In recent years, the number of female CEOs participating in accelerator programmes in Europe from 2015 to today has not changed. It seems as though, even today, women have not been able to make the right impression in the startup world. But there are examples that the proportion of women can also be very high. Finland, Ireland, Hungary are only a few countries where female-led startups raise significantly higher amounts than male-led startups.

The SSA and Female Entrepreneurship

Switzerland is expected to join this list of countries soon. We are working on the project Femtrepreneurs to promote female support in the startup scene. We try to motivate as many women as possible via social media, events for the startup scene and to design their own startup! More awareness, support for female founders is required and the SSA is here to drive the movement forward!