Financing and support tools for female entrepreneurs are needed
The METRO study also reveals a high demand of state programs fostering female entrepreneurship: 80% of those surveyed – men and women - are in favour of government programs that help women to become entrepreneurs.
Despite growing evidence that investing in female entrepreneurship is crucial for economic growth, many women lack the resources to put their ideas into practice. For example, according to the University of Hohenheim, only in Deutschland up to 60.000 additional enterprises could be created, if women could catch up and realize their business projects. Therefore, we encourage political decision-makers to keep on working and promoting policies to overcome current financial and societal obstacles to female entrepreneurship. In this sense, we fully support measures and initiatives to make women aware of business support programmes and funding opportunities such as the WEgate-platform -a one-stop-shop for women entrepreneurship- or the EU Commission’s Prize for Women Innovators.
METRO also takes responsibility in the promotion of female entrepreneurs. Today, METRO starts its project “Own Business Girls”, with which we want to set a first example for future female entrepreneurs: Together with the HypoVereinsbank, we support every baby girl born on 8 March 2018 in Düsseldorf, where METRO's headquarters are located, with 2.000 EUR seed capital for their future own business. The girls will dispose over this amount after they have reached their legal age.