What We're Reading
The newly released Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report: Navigating Challenges, Driving Change reveals that while women entrepreneurs continue to demonstrate remarkable resilience and innovation, they still encounter persistent barriers that hinder their full participation in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Drawing on insights from 161,528 adults across 51 countries, this year’s report sheds light on these challenges—highlighting, among other findings, the differing reasons women and men cite for closing a business.
This report examines the issues and policy solutions used around the world to develop women’s entrepreneurship financing. It is aligned with the principles of the OECD Council Recommendation on SME Financing, which underlines the need to develop a wide range of financing options for entrepreneurs and recognise differences between different entrepreneur profiles, and builds on the findings of the OECD flagship report Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs Scoreboard as well as broader OECD work on women entrepreneurship, including the report on Entrepreneurship Policy through a Gender Lens.
This ADB paper introduces the 2024 Female Entrepreneurship Index, which examines the conditions that encourage successful entrepreneurship among women and provides insights for policymakers. By evaluating gender-specific factors across economies, the index highlights how successful female entrepreneurs contribute to economic and social development.
