One in three female entrepreneurs are the main economic contribution to your household in Latin Americaaccording to the results of a private survey conducted 1,500 women between the ages of 25 and 55 from 11 countries of the region, of which 62% have their own business and 16% are freelancers.
In Argentinaaccording to data from the Ministry of Productive Development, one in three micro, small and medium enterprises are led by women.
The study “MiPyMEs led by women” concluded that micro, small and medium enterprises led by women presented a higher percentage of participation among businessmen and women entrepreneurs under 30 years of age (37.1%), than in older age groups. age.
The report also reflected that ventures and SMEs led by women are concentrated in traditionally feminized sectors, such as education, with 73% participation; health (42%), real estate activities (40%), personal services (39%), hotels and restaurants (38%), commerce and entertainment services (37%).
This situation chart determines that MSMEs with female leadership in general export less and supply large companies to a lesser extent.
The study made it possible to observe that from “2007 onwards there was a gradual but sustained growth in the leadership of women in physical companies”, a trend that was cut in 2016 when a decline began to be observed in the percentage of companies whose owners they are women.
In the first three quarters of 2021 -according to the report-, “the participation of MSMEs whose owner is a woman reached 30.8%, which shows a contraction of almost one percentage point during the pandemic.”
In the private survey, carried out by the Avon company in 11 countries of the region, a marked coincidence is verified in that the main barriers to the professional development of women are economic and symbolic, among which are prejudices and gender stereotypes.
“Even so, the interest in entrepreneurship is very high throughout the region and 50% of those surveyed started their own business during the pandemic,” the survey cited, according to which “one in three entrepreneurs is the main household income, while another large percentage (35%), contributes to the same extent as their partners”.
The majority of those surveyed (60%) say that they are interested in both having their own business and working independently, given that they see freelance activity as a complement (77%).
In turn, between the two options, having your own business has more positive responses (29%) than being a freelancer (9%).
In Argentina, 41% say they have their own business or entrepreneurship, 20% have a dependent job plus their own entrepreneurship, 14% work on their own (freelance); 8% only in a dependency relationship and 7% are formal workers in a dependency relationship and add income from freelance activities.
Entrepreneur or non-entrepreneur, in the 11 countries surveyed, women agree that their professional development is affected by the prejudice that women are more emotional (39%), that they are in that position because they have had sex with someone (38%) and because they are weak (26%).
In the case of Argentina, the prejudice of having a position due to sex rises to 40% of positive responses, emotionality as a defect (38%) and the presumption that women are weak had 27% adherence.
In the country, 27% of women said that there are no stereotypes that affect their professional development, while 23% pointed to the prejudice that they are in that position “because they are women” as a barrier, and 22% said dealing with “climbing” label.
