A new report from the OECD has found that more tailored support is needed for women who wish to start or grow their business in Ireland. The report "Supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Ireland" highlighted that where targeted initiatives had been introduced, a significantly higher number of female entrepreneurs responded than happens in more general initiatives.
The report identified the following key characteristics of female entrepreneurship in Ireland:
- 6.1 percent of population are female entrepreneurs
- Ratio of men to women starting a business is 2:1
- Ireland is ranked 15 of 25 European countries in terms of female entrepreneurship activity
- Necessity is the key motivation for female-led startups
- Fear of failure is a big deterrent
- Large number of female-owned businesses are locally traded services
- Female-led businesses have lower levels of employment, growth and international sales
- Finance is critical issue
- Childcare is a major obstacle
While many of these findings are also commonly found in other countries, it was suggested that culture was having a significant negative effect on women in Ireland starting their own business.
A survey of female entrepreneurs was undertaken for the report and it found that 73 percent of the respondents started the business on their own, almost 50 percent had no sales outside of Ireland, while 48 percent have no full-time staff and 55 percent have no part-time staff. More than 22 percent said that they started the business for "financial reasons," while 23 percent said that the biggest obstacle to starting a business was "lack of startup capital." The demographic profile of female entrepreneurs in Ireland is mainly between 39-58 years old (73 percent), married with children (62 percent), have third level education (92 percent), have a parent who was an entrepreneur (44 percent), personally knew a female entrepreneur before starting the business (59 percent) and played competitive sport (39 percent). A point of concern is the fact that approximately 10 perceent of respondents said that they were either dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied with their current life as an entrepreneur.
While support for female entrepreneurs has been growing in recent years in Ireland, a number of significant obstacles continue to exist. Most notable among these is the current discrepancy between the qualifying conditions for Maternity Benefit for employees and those for female entrepreneurs which is acting as an impediment to women setting up new businesses and creating jobs. Another major challenge facing female entrepreneurs is access to finance. While all entrepreneurs can access public finance programmes through the Local Enterprise Offices, women account for only one-quarter of recipients of financial support. This is partially explained by programme restrictions on the types of businesses that are eligible for funding as they exclude locally service-based businesses which are often the type of enterprises operated by women.
There is therefore a need to open up financial support to women who operate in the local service sector, or to provide an alternative source of support. Indeed the substantial success of the customised financial programs by Enterprise Ireland for female entrepreneurs through the "Competitive Feasibility Fund" and the "Competitive Start Fund" has highlighted how targeted support can make a significant difference to increasing the rate of applications from female entrepreneurs for state support. Networking support and peer learning programmes are also quite well-developed in Ireland and several of these initiatives are targeted towards supporting business development and growth. Despite these initiatives, there is significant potential to offer more support to women in developing their businesses, including helping them to learn to manage growing businesses and accepting and managing risk.
One of the authors of the report is Professor Thomas Cooney of the Dublin Institute of Technology and he stated that “similar to gender quotas in the Dail, we need to introduce more targeted initiatives for female entrepreneurs if Ireland wishes to have a genuine balance in terms of men and women starting a business. There is no reason why we cannot have gender quotas on international trade missions, dedicated co-working spaces for female entrepreneurs in larger urban areas, innovative microfinance schemes, and a range of other initiatives that could be easily introduced without a high cost to government."
The key policy recommendations identified in the report were as follows:
- Provide additional support for women who seek to develop and grow their businesses, including helping them to strengthen their networks, acquire management skills, learn to manage risk, identify researchers with innovative ideas and grow into international markets.
- Improve the treatment of the self-employed relative to employees with respect to Maternity Benefits and Unemployment Benefits.
- Improve access to child care for women entrepreneurs, including through the use of tax incentives.
- Scale-up well-established women’s entrepreneurship support initiatives that have demonstrated to be successful, including Competitive Feasibility Fund, the Competitive Start Fund, Going for Growth and NDRC Female Founders.
The report is part of a series of "rapid policy assessments" that are undertaken by the Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Programme of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This work is undertaken in partnership with the Directorate General for Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission. This report presents a brief overview of current and planned support for women’s entrepreneurship in Ireland and provides an assessment of the key strengths and weaknesses of current and planned offerings in the areas of entrepreneurship skills, access to finance and the regulatory and institutional environment. The full report can be viewed at http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/RPA-Ireland-women-FINAL.pdf.