女企业家引领女性获得更多更好的工作

Norma Gomez and Felicia Siegrist*T his Brief explores the role of women entrepreneurs in job creation, focusing on how women-ownedfirms contribute to women’s employment. Using data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys(WBES) covering formally registered firms across 168 economies over 19 years, the analysis showsthat women remain systematically underrepresented as entrepreneurs, top managers, and workersin formal firms with five or more workers. Women-owned firms play a critical role in expanding women'sformal employment, hiring about 20 percentage points more women in permanent full-time positions thanmen-owned firms across income groups, firm sizes, sectors, and regions. In low-income economies, this gapis even more pronounced, with women-owned firms hiring about twice the share of women compared tomen-owned firms. This pattern may partly reflect women’s concentration in sectors that employ morewomen, but it persists across all sectors. However, structural barriers such as limited access to finance,training, and markets often constrain women’s business performance and job growth, resulting in fewer netjobs per firm compared to men-owned firms. These findings suggest that gender gaps in job creation reflectstructural features of labor markets. Removing barriers to women’s entrepreneurship could not only unlockadditional job growth but also expand women’s access to full-time employment.Public Disclosure Authorized Africa (17 percent) and South Asia (16 percent). Even informal full-time employment, women remain concentrated inadministrative,support,and sales roles,with limitedparticipation in technical and operational positions across allregions. The untapped economic potential of womenentrepreneurs and workers Women represent a powerful yet largely untapped sourceof economic growth, both as entrepreneurs and workers.Althoughwomen account for nearly half of the globalworking-agepopulation and demonstrate entrepreneurialintentionscomparable to those of men,they remainsystematicallyunderrepresented in entrepreneurship andlabor markets (GEM 2025). World Bank Enterprise Surveys(WBES) data from 2006 to 2025 show that only 13 percent to20 percent of formal firms have a woman as the top manager.Women’s representation in formal firm ownership is similar,ranging from 11 percent in lower-middle-income economiesto 19 percent in high-income economies (refer to figure 1).This pattern indicates that economic development alone doesnot ensure gender parity in firm ownership and leadership.Public Disclosure Authorized In the sample, women represent 38 percent of workers innon-production roles but only 28 percent in production roles,a pattern with direct implications for wages and careerprogression. This occupational concentration not only reflectsgender differences in job quality (Petrongolo and Ronchi2020) but also suggests that existing training and skillsdevelopmentopportunities may not sufficiently supportwomen’spathways into higher-paying technical andoperational roles that offer greater growth potential and areless likely to be displaced by artificial intelligence. Closingthe occupational gaps could yield substantialeconomic gains: income per capita would be almost 20percent higher if women were employed at the same rate asmen (Pennings 2022), and an additional $5 trillion to $6trillion could be added to the global economy if womenentrepreneursstarted and scaled their businesses at thesamerate as men(We-Fi 2022).Expanding women’s Women account for 32 percent of full-time workers informally registered firms, highlighting persistent gender gapsinaccess to formal employment.Regional variation issubstantial: women’s participation is highest in East Asia andthe Pacific (41 percent) and Europe and Central Asia (38percent), but significantly lower in the Middle East and NorthPublic Disclosure Authorized Across all income levels, women remain underrepresented in firm leadership and ownership women-owned firms employ a 20 percentage-point highershare of women full-time workers than firms owned by men.This finding holds across firm age, region, and size, despitevariation in baseline levels across contexts. By firm size, 54percent of workers are female in small women-owned firms,compared with 29 percent in men-owned firms, with the gapnarrowing but remaining present among medium firms (47percent versus 30 percent) and large firms (45 percent versus31 percent). entrepreneurshipcan have a multiplier effect,increasingfemalelabor force participation and improving overallproductivityand resource allocation in the economy(Chiplunkar and Goldberg 2024). ThisBrief analyzes the contribution of womenentrepreneurs to job creation, including their role in creatingmore jobs for women. It draws on WBES data from across168 economies over 19 years, enabling rigorous cross-countryanalysis of firm performance, job creation, and workforcecomposition. Examiningdifferences across economy income levels,women-ownedfirms employ a higher sha