Susan Namirimu, founder of Mtindo, trains women in Northern Uganda in tailoring, literacy, numeracy and workplace skills to help them find employment in a region where many face a lack of job opportunities. Her ambition is to become the largest employer of women in Northern Uganda. Mtindo has trained 227 women and created about 50 jobs per year since the social enterprise launched in 2020.

“What I’m most proud of is seeing a woman arrive shy and unsure, then within a year stand tall with confidence,” Namirimu, a 2026 Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellow, told researchers for the GEM 2025/2026 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report. “When she finds her voice and starts shaping her own future, that’s everything.”

Yet Namirimu has found that women need more support in managing family caregiving responsibilities to reach their potential in the workplace. In her work at Mitndo , she also sees a need for better interest rates and loan repayment schedules for startups run by women entrepreneurs, along with incentives for companies to employ women.

Startup activity by women entrepreneurs like Namirimu is catching up to men’s around the world, but many women are not active in the sectors that attract venture capital or among established businesses past the three-and-one-half year mark.

Those were some of the findings in the just-released GEM 2025/2026 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report . The sweeping report includes 48 economies, and data from 150,799 adults. The researchers will be holding a free webinar to explore the findings on October 15. (Here is the registration link .) The report was sponsored by the Cartier Women’s Initiative, the School of Management Fribough and the Frank & Eileen Institute for Women and Allies.

The researchers found that, globally, 12% of women are running new businesses, compared to 14% of men. Women also lead about 40% of high-potential businesses. The report defines high-potential based on innovation, job creation and export orientation. Women outpaced men in leading high-potential businesses in five countries, regardless of income level: Chile, El Salvador, India, Israel and Oman.

However, women are underrepresented among more established businesses, with the average woman-to-man ratio .69 in 2025. At the same time, 70% of informal investment globally went to male entrepreneurs. One reason for the funding gap, the researchers believe, is that they are concentrated in sectors, such as social and government services and retail, that don’t deliver eye-popping returns.

“Investors don’t play there, because the ROI is not very high,” said Amanda Elam, lead author, who is a research Fellow at the award-winning Diana International Research Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Babson College, in an interview.

However, governments and policymakers are prioritizing these sectors—raising questions about whether there are other routes to support women entrepreneurs. “This is the social progress that balances out the economic progress that we’re all looking for in the development of our economies,” said Elam.

Despite this gap, women are well-represented in technology-enabled and innovative entrepreneurship, with 44% of entrepreneurs using digital tools, 43% using AI for product or service development and 42% reporting product or process innovation.

However, tech adoption varies by industry. “Perhaps there is a slower push in certain sectors for adoption of technology that is not necessarily a women’s education or awareness issue but maybe a sectoral issue,” said Aileen Ionescu-Somers, executive director of GEM.

Cristina Campero Peredo, CEO and co-founder of PROSPERiA , a health technology company in Mexico that has pioneered the use of AI in early detection of eye diseases, told the researchers that entrepreneurs in working-capital-intensive sectors with long development timelines need more access to risk capital, as well as stronger public procurement mechanisms and corporate innovation partnerships. She is also a Cartier’ Women’s Initiative fellow.

“I feel very lucky that I had this business idea at the exact right point in my life,” she told GEM researchers. “I already had some experience and I had no dependents, so it was easier to take the financial risk.”

If there’s one thing holding women back from building sustainable and scalable businesses, the report found, it’s the second shift. Women’s exit to entry ratio was 7.6% higher than men’s, and women were 55% more likely to cite family or personal circumstances as a reason for an exit.

To address some of the inequities, the report recommends direct measurement of high-potential startup activity, providing growth-stage support to women entrepreneurs, expanding women’s access to digital and innovation ecosystems, broadening the definition of industries where high-potential activity takes place to include those where women are innovating, addressing caregiving challenges directly and investing in women’s investment networks.

Angela Ursem, co-founder of Food for Skin , a B Corp that makes natural vegan skincare products in the Netherlands and a Cartier Women’s Initiative fellow, as well, told the GEM researchers that access to growth capital is one of the greatest challenges facing women-led businesses. “Women entrepreneurs do not need fundamentally different things than men to start, grow, and scale successful businesses,” she told GEM reseachers. “They need equal access to capital, networks, visibility, and market opportunities.”

Input like this is one reason the report recommends more support for women’s investor networks, often populated by women who have built wealth in their own businesses. “Women are making those investments because women are starting businesses in sectors that women care about, that approach women’s markets and markets for children, as well,” said Elam.