How Funding Women Entrepreneurs Can Grow The Global Economy By $5 Trillion

Photo by Semina Psichogiopoulou on Unsplash

This article was first published on Programme EVE.

​Women make the world go round. More than half of the world’s population, women are the world’s most powerful consumers driving 70–80% of all purchasing decisions. I believe that women entrepreneurs are the biggest untapped resource to re-ignite the global economy. However, the path to seizing that opportunity is not yet clear. Let’s look behind-the-scenes of a global upcoming megatrend, the current barriers in the way, and what we can do to unleash huge economic growth for us all.

The Economic Gender Gap. 

The World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Gender Gap Report tells us that if nothing changes today, it will take “202 years for women to close the economic gender gap … progress has been slow, especially in terms of participation of women in labour force, where the gender gap slightly reversed.” In my 2015 TEDx talk on investing in female founders, that gender gap was estimated to be 80 years. Why are we going backwards, what barriers still exist and what can each of us do to change things?

The unfair burden of unpaid care work

Forcing women to carry the unpaid childcare and eldercare burden around the world holds everyone back. Many reasons make this a complex situation to change.

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