NWBC is excited to unveil our latest research report Engineering Change: The Blueprint for Strengthening Women’s STEM Entrepreneurship. In the STEM field, women are underrepresented and consistently face challenges when starting and while owning their businesses in these sectors. Government intervention such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act sought to expand opportunities in disadvantaged communities through large investments in manufacturing, clean energy, and infrastructure projects.
We performed this report to further our understanding of female entrepreneurship in high-yield and high-growth industries. The findings in this report suggest that federal policy could positively impact women STEM entrepreneurship.
This literature review summarizes research and scholarship on women’s entrepreneurship in rural, Tribal, and other underserved communities. These populations each face unique socio-cultural, infrastructural, and other challenges, and draw on resulting strengths to overcome financial barriers, limited access to training and mentorship, and wild cards like the COVID-19 pandemic. This report documents gaps in data and sets the stage for further analysis of rural and Tribal women entrepreneurs’ lived experiences.
Lack of access to capital continues to be a barrier for women-owned businesses.
On average, women start their business with half as much capital as men ($75,000 vs. $135,000). Women-owned and men-owned high growth potential firms experience larger disparities in capital at the time of founding ($150,000 vs. $320,000).
Corporations use supplier diversity programs to strengthen their supply chains by cultivating the marketplace of women-owned, minority-owned, veteran-owned and LGBT-owned vendors.
These programs originated as government initiatives to foster the use of underutilized historically disenfranchised businesses.
Check out the latest numbers and characteristics in our analysis of data from the Survey of Business Owners via the United States Census.
There are 749,197 Asian women-owned businesses in the United States. Learn more about this important subset of the entrepreneurship community.
There are 1,521,494 Black women-owned businesses in the United States. This reflects an increase of 66.9% from 2007. Learn more about this important segment of the business owner community.
There are 1,469,991 Latina women-owned businesses in the United States. Learn more about this fast growing segment of the entrepreneurship economy.
Learn more about women-owned, equally-owned and men-owned business performance and if your state makes the list for most women-owned businesses!