Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation to create a sustainable world; this has also been recognised under United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number five. Both, the European Union and India share a commitment to enhance the empowerment of women. Despite the progress over the last few decades, many challenges remain, and women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of leadership and inadequately represented in public debates.

Gender inequality makes it improbable to tap the potential of half the world’s population. Women are often subject to harmful traditions, social taboos, denied equal opportunities and face discrimination. The same also translates to businesses and boardrooms.

Both, India and Europe seek to increase gender diversity in business as the key factor to boost productivity. Statistically speaking, only 13.76% of entrepreneurs in India are women. India ranks a lowly 70 th among 77 countries covered under the Female Entrepreneurship Index. In Europe, the number is higher. While female employment rate has increased to 67.3%, just 34.4% of the self-employed are women, 31% of those working as start-up entrepreneurs, and only 14.8% of start-up founders are female.

Locking women out of economic opportunities – either by not supporting their businesses, or by ignoring their ideas and experience – weighs on overall economic performance and limits the innovation. Supporting women is proven to be good for business. Data shows that enterprises with women in at least half of leadership positions have higher sales growth, are more profitable and get a better return on their assets. Creating equal opportunities for men and women to collaborate on decisions also leads to diminished risk-taking, improves employee turnover rates and ensures a balanced approach.

When it comes to the start-up ecosystem, a major impediment women founders face is access to capital. In 2021, India had the highest number of start-ups becoming unicorns. However only 10% of these companies are led by women according to NASSCOM Tech Start- up Report 2021. Between January 2018 and June 2020, funding raised by start-ups with at least one woman-founder accounted for only 5.7% of total funding across 378 deals, while female-founded start-ups received only 1.43% across 80 deals (Makers India Report 2020 YS – State of Women in Tech Entrepreneurship in India). Similarly, in Europe, companies founded solely by women garnered just 1.1% of the total capital invested in venture-backed start-ups in 2021.

Support in finding the funding is only one of the means to increase women’s representation in business. Apart from providing services such as free credit ratings, apprenticeship and corporate partnerships, women need opportunities, incubation and acceleration support. Helping them start and scale-up can encourage a new generation of women entrepreneurs.

At the same time, a societal change is imperative where we collectively support women in business. Female leaders and entrepreneurs need to be supported, both professionally and personally. As role models, and an inspiration for the future businesswomen, it is important to give them voice, platform, and outreach. This will also help in a growing community of women entrepreneurs to network, collaborate and innovate to make the world a better place.

Gender equality should be viewed as a business imperative that increases profitability, not an initiative. Moreover, diversity - from gender to cultural, age and race related should also lead to sound decision-making, better resilience in times of crisis and it has been shown to foster creativity and innovation.