Are Women Less Entrepreneurial?

The folks over at Huffington Post caught my attention with this one. While I’m surrounded by Fly Female Entrepreneurs each and every day, the online news source recently shared stats supporting the fact that women are (gasp!) less entrepreneurial than men. Say it isn’t so! It may be hard for many of us to imagine, but following are a few nuggets supporting this statement from Steven Bartlett’s latest article on the site:

• The odds of a man starting a business at any point in time are double that of a woman. (Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics 2010)

• Women only make up 10 percent of the founders at high-growth tech companies. (Lesa Mitchell, a department vice president at Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, as reported in the New York Times in June, 2012.)

• There are more male early-stage entrepreneurs in all but 2 of the 54 economies, than early stage female entrepreneurs. (The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2011 Global Report)

The piece also went on to state that as the primary care givers in most homes, women aren’t always in the position to take the financial risks associated with entrepreneurship. But wait, this next stat really breaks my heart. According to a 2009 study, less than 47.7% of women believe they are capable of starting a business, while well over half (62.1%) of men believe they are capable. Are we really suffering from low confidence like this, ladies?

Click here to read the entire Huffington Post story and don’t hesitate to share your thoughts. Are women really less entrepreneurial? What say you?