Women are only involved in one in four companies being founded

International Women’s Day offers an opportunity to take stock of the role of women in the economy: this year it is rather sobering. The Credit Protection Association of 1870 has analyzed and compared the number of female founders in 300,000 companies registered in the commercial register since 2019.

In 2023 there were around 70,000 new businesses, of which only one in four companies was founded with female participation. Around twelve percent of start-ups (in 2019 it was eleven percent) were founded exclusively by women. There was no progress at the upper levels: only 15 percent of managing director positions were held by women in 2023, the same as in 2019. On the other hand, the proportion of women on female supervisory boards increased from 19 to 23 percent.

Investment imbalance

Investments in domestic start-ups almost exclusively benefit all-male founding teams. This is shown by the results of a study by the auditing and consulting company EY. Companies with headquarters in Austria that were founded no more than ten years ago were taken into account.

“As in 2022, around nine out of ten euros invested will go to all-male teams,” says Florian Haas from EY Austria. In 84 percent of the financing rounds last year, the founding teams consisted only of men (in 2022 it was 81 percent). In 14 percent of the approximately 180 financing rounds there were male and female founders. There were only three rounds of financing for all-female management teams in the first half of 2023.