Editor’s note: This is part 2 of a two-part series on the insights from the 8th edition of the World Bank’s Entrepreneurship Database. Read part 1.
Entrepreneurs advance the WBG’s jobs agenda by expanding the number of job-creating firms and accelerating inclusive private sector–led growth. Yet, women’s participation in formal business ownership and leadership remains limited in many countries. Women represent a massively underutilized source of entrepreneurial energy, and unlocking that potential is not merely a gender equity objective — it is a jobs and growth imperative. Understanding the scale of the challenge is critical for designing policies that promote inclusive private sector development.
A persistent challenge has been the lack of comparable, sex-disaggregated data on entrepreneurship, which has constrained efforts to measure women’s participation, identify barriers, and track progress over time. To address this, the World Bank, in partnership with the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We‑Fi), released the Entrepreneurship Database. Every two years this resource tracks differences between female and male business owners. The 8th edition of the Entrepreneurship Database provides comparable, sex‑disaggregated data for 117 economies and covers the 2014-2024 period. This is a notable increase of 20 countries tracking sex-disaggregated data on entrepreneurship compared to the 7th edition and providing insights to help understand women’s participation in business.
What do the numbers tell us? In formal businesses, women remain underrepresented in ownership and governance roles. In 2024, women comprised roughly one in four owners and directors of newly created limited liability companies (LLCs). This underscores persistent barriers in corporate structures that often require larger capital, stronger networks, and better access to formal finance (Figure 1). By contrast, women’s participation is slightly higher among sole proprietor businesses: they represented over one‑third of new sole proprietorships in 2024. This suggests many women opt for independent or smaller‑scale ventures where entry costs and institutional hurdles are lower.
Data shows a gap between men’s and women’s entrepreneurship across all incomes worldwide, but the higher the national income, the lower the gap. Figure 2 shows that in high-income countries, the share of female sole proprietors is 11 percentage points lower than the share of women in the adult population – a gap similar to that of upper middle-income countries (12 percentage points). This disparity grows progressively larger as income levels fall more, reaching 18 percentage points in lower-middle-income countries, and 19 percentage points in low-income economies.
Pilot data, disaggregated by sex, was collected in a few economies for limited liability companies that are legally required to have a board of members (for instance private corporations exceeding certain company size thresholds or companies whose bylaws mandate a board). Under this requirement, board members must be disclosed and registered at the time of business registration. Figure 3 shows that women remain underrepresented in board seats in all countries, with female representation not exceeding one-quarter of board positions in most in 2024. Data shows that across all piloted countries, females represented, on average, only 27.8% of board members. Figure 3 also highlights big discrepancies in female share representation across countries, with 45.9% and 41.9% of board members as women in Thailand and Montenegro, while in Pakistan and Qatar these shares amount to 13.6% and 14.8%.
Parity in the entrepreneurial sphere is still elusive. Our data shows that only a few countries were able to have the same or higher share of female sole proprietors relative to men in 2024. Figure 4 demonstrates how the share of new female sole proprietors in four of those economies evolved from 2014 and 2024.
Thailand stands out as the only economy globally that always has a higher share of female sole proprietors relative to men from 2014 to 2024. Another prominent example is Jamaica, whose upward trajectory led it to have the world’s highest share of female sole proprietors in 2024, hovering at 58%. Uruguay is another notable illustration of a country that had a 50% share of female sole proprietors and despite small declines over time was able to rebound to gender parity in 2023 and 2024. Rwanda is the economy that showed the biggest improvement in the share of female sole proprietors globally, growing from a female share of 34% in 2014 to 55% in 2024. Rwanda’s progress has been a result of multiple reforms including digitalizing all business registration procedures, simplifying business entry, offering women training, advisory support, and digital literacy programs.
Explore data for the 117 economies with sex disaggregated data on entrepreneurship in the Entrepreneurship Database.
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