FEMALE ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN IRELAND

In spite of their growing numbers, women-owned businesses continue to lag behind male owned firms in Ireland both for recently started businesses and for established businesses (Forfas, 2007). In 2006 there were 60,000 male new firm entrepre­neurs and 21,000 female new firm entrepreneurs in Ireland where men were 2.9 times more likely than women to be new firm entrepreneurs (4.3% of men compared to 1.5% ofwomen). The imbalance in these trends unfortunately has not improved greatly over the last five years, where the average rate of early stage entrepreneurship for the period 2002 to 2007 was 12.0 per cent for men and 4.8 per cent for women. In addition to the gender dif­ference the number of female established firms decreased from 3.4 per cent in 2004 to 2.8 per cent in 2007 (Fitzsimons & O’Gorman,2007). In Ireland women are underrepresented among all categories of entrepreneurs — only one-third of all entrepreneurs were women — less than one-quarter of high-expectation and high-growth entrepre­neurs were women (Fitzsimons & O’ Gorman 2007). Moreover in Ireland women are less active as entrepreneurs across all age cohorts, among all income categories and across all educational levels bar one — women with post-graduate qualifications have the same rate of early stage entrepreneurial activity as men. Only one-quarter of the high — expectation and high-growth entrepreneurs are women (Fitzsimons & O’ Gorman, 2008). The dearth of females starting high technology busi­nesses was also highlighted by Richardson and Hynes (2007) where it was recommended that educational, social and professional barriers that militate against females participating in engineer­ing and technology entrepreneurial activity could be reduced. Worryingly, these statistics exist in the backdrop where female education standards are higher than ever before, where female participation rates in the labour market have risen significantly and a high proportion of the female population in the age cohort at which entrepreneurial activity is most likely to occur. Therefore, it is argued that greater levels of female activity in starting and growing businesses must be encouraged and supported. This necessitates a more developed understanding of the profile of women who start a business, their aspiration for business growth and the underlying causes of the challenges en­countered in achieving this growth. A particular focus is placed on the role of ICT as an enabler of business development for the female entrepreneurs and more so the mompreneur.