Ifo Institute calls for measures against founder gender gap

New figures from the institute show that the proportion of female founders is declining. The scientists call for political measures.

The proportion of female founders in Germany continued to fall as a result of the Corona pandemic. This is shown in a new paper by the Ifo Institute, which analyzes start-ups from 2005 to 2021 based on commercial register entries. According to the paper, the share of women in individual startups fell by 1.2 percentage points between 2019 and 2021.

Women are behind only about 20 percent of start-ups overall, according to Start-up Monitor 2022. In the ifo essay, the authors suggest that different preferences between men and women and a lower willingness to take risks on the part of women are possible causes of the gender gap. However, structural problems have also become more apparent as a result of the Corona pandemic. For this reason, the authors of the Ifo Institute call for a consistent expansion of childcare and a future renunciation of school closures.

Other reasons for the founder gender gap, according to the paper, are a different career and study choice of women. They continue to be underrepresented in degree programs with high startup rates, such as computer science, it said. "In addition, women receive less external funding when starting up," the authors write. Whether this is due to discrimination by banks and investors or low demand from women, however, cannot be determined.