A study by the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae) points out that female entrepreneurship in Brazil showed signs of recovery in the last quarter of last year, after suffering a retraction from the first months of the new coronavirus pandemic (covid-19). 19).
The study, based on data from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pnadc), showed that after dropping to a total of 8.6 million in the second quarter of 2020, the number of women running a business in the country closed the fourth quarter of 2021 at 10.1 million, the same result recorded in the last quarter of 2019, before the pandemic.
Despite this evolution, the participation of women entrepreneurs in the universe of business owners in Brazil (34%) is still below the best historical mark, registered in the 4th quarter of 2019, when they represented 34.8% of the total.
The Sebrae study also indicates that female participation among employer business owners also remains below the pre-crisis period. At the end of 2019, there were 1.3 million business owners who were hiring employees, which represented 13.6% of the total number of business owners. By the end of last year, that number had dropped to 1.1 million (11.4% of the universe).
Data shows that 50% of business owners are in the service sector, while 21% are in the construction sector. Regarding men, 35% of business owners are concentrated in the service sector, while 21% are in the construction sector.
Also according to the survey, the proportion of women who are heads of households has increased. In 2019, they were 47% and in the last quarter of 2021, female heads of household entrepreneurs represented 49% of the total.
On the other hand, the participation of black women in business has decreased. While in the last quarter of 2019, before the pandemic, they were 50.3% of business owners, in the last quarter of last year, they accounted for 48.5%. White women went from 48.4% of business owners to 49.9%.
Sebrae shows that the schooling of women who are entrepreneurship has increased and that the difference in the number of women with at least a high school level has increased in relation to men between the last quarter of 2019 and the same period of 2021.
In the fourth quarter of last year, 68% of female entrepreneurs had at least a high school education. Among men, this proportion was 54%. The variation in the period was 11 percentage points among women and 4 points among men.
The survey showed growth in female participation in the information/communication and education/health sectors. Between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the same period last year, the presence of female entrepreneurs grew by 3 percentage points and 4 points, respectively.
