US ahead in having most female entrepreneurs, Bangalore India's only entry

Women entrepreneurs are becoming the new 'Heroes.' The fight to remove gender parity in different fields seem to be the major task at this time. The three cities have the most number of women entrepreneurs are Chicago, Boston and Silicon Valley according to the 2015 Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking. All these cities are in the US where working women force comprises of 47% of the total. In the 21 cities that are listed, Indian city, Bangalore comes down below at 19^th rank. The only good thing is that it has carved a place in the list when gender disparity is so rampant in India.

Now even in the cities that top the list, the percentage with which women are becoming entrepreneurs is slow pacing. Chicago, which has the highest number, has only 30% women entrepreneurs preceded by Boston and Silicon Valley, which have 29% and 24% respectively while Bangalore closes down at just 11% women as entrepreneurs. We may say that this is because of the risk factor related to opening up a business or becoming an entrepreneur. It needs a lot of courage and financial help from investors to open up a business from scratch. So, now that the women are gathering courage to take up that level of risk, sometimes, the investors lack the trust that a woman can control an entire business and hence the slow speed of increase in the number of women in entrepreneurial positions.

Moving on, not just in venturing in entrepreneurship, women are far behind in comparison to men in other areas as well. “Revenues (just 1.8% of female-led firms have revenues of over $1 million vs. 6.3% of male-led firms); patents (5.65% of female firms seek patent approval versus 13% of men); and job creation (36% of women-led firms create jobs to 44% of male-led firms),” according to a report in Forbes. This shows the widely spread out gap between men and women when it comes to business.

However, if we compare from past years, women have definitely grown in these fields as since 1997 women entrepreneurs have increased by 59%, according to National Association of Women Owned Business (NAWOB) in a report by Nerdwallet. Now, 8.6 million businesses are owned and run by female entrepreneurs that make up to 1.3 trillion dollars. The characteristics kept in mind while assessing the best cities for female entrepreneurs are business friendliness, presence of female entrepreneurs, earnings of female workers, education level and economic state. This assessment told that Washington D.C. is the best city for female entrepreneurs, San Francisco being the second best and Seattle being the third best in the US.

Picture Credit- Fortune