The gender aspect of entrepreneurship in Greece in 2016-2017
The Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE), in the context of its participation in the research program “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor” (GEM), presented recently the Annual Report for Entrepreneurship in Greece 2016-2017. The gender aspect of the main findings that stem from the 2016 results are the following:
1) Business environment in Greece remains worse than in most European countries in many of its dimensions. The low momentum of the Greek entrepreneurship is negatively affected by the economic crisis, yet it is mainly due to the structural problems of the economy such as bureaucracy, unstable tax framework and the limited or ineffective function of mechanisms to promote and support entrepreneurship.
2) Female early stage entrepreneurship decreased at 4.8% (about 168 thousand women) against 6% in 2015, whereas male early-stage entrepreneurship dropped at 6.6% (about 200 thousand men) from 7.5% in 2015. Despite the decline of female entrepreneurship rates after three years of increase, the percentage of women in early stage entrepreneurship remains high (42%). This outcome is related to the higher unemployment rate and/or the need to supplement income in households where possibly male have lost their jobs. Besides, Greek women are more likely than men to be necessity entrepreneurs.
3) Considering early stage entrepreneurship in Greece a decline of new ventures in all age groups emerged in 2016, which is more intense in senior entrepreneurs where the respective index dropped at 5.9% against 7.2% in 2015 (4.8% on average between 2003-2016). Only one out of four early stage entrepreneurs over time are seniors, with necessity being the main motive for their entrepreneurial behaviour. Respectively, women early stage entrepreneurs in this age category are more than men (53% against 47%), contrary to the younger age groups.
For your comprehensive information, here are the links associated with the IOBE report for entrepreneurship in Greece during the period 2016-2017:
a)full text in Greek (126 pages): http://iobe.gr/docs/research/RES_02_18122017_REP_GR.pdf
b)executive summary in English (8 pages): http://iobe.gr/docs/research/en/RES_02_18122017_PRE_ENG.pdf.
It is underlined that IOBE is a private, non-profit, public-benefit research organisation. It was established in 1975 with the dual purpose of promoting research on current problems and prospects of the Greek economy and its sectors and of generating reliable information, analysis and proposals for action that are non produced elsewhere and can thus be of high value to policy makers in the context of economic policy making: http://iobe.gr/iobe_en.asp .
