According to results from the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs, women from Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia are more likely to create their own entrepreneurship in the Latin American region.
Although women’s entrepreneurship is often driven by need, strong-supporting conditions such as professional development opportunities, access to financial services and facilities for businesses pave the way to business ownership.
Developed markets lead the index: New Zealand (1), Canada (2) and United States (3). These countries have conditions that support women’s business ownership, such as strong small-and-medium business communities, a high quality of governance and ease of doing business.
The countries in the region are led by Costa Rica (20), Peru (23), Colombia (26) and Chile (29) followed by Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Ecuador and Mexico.
The results reveal that high-income economies tend to have a better performance in terms of generating financial assets and supporting women’s business conditions.
The index suggests that female entrepreneurs tend to thrive in environments where female-gender bias is less in terms of opportunities to access financial services, education and where market factors for small-and-medium enterprises are favorable.
The index uses 12 indicators and 25 sub-indicators to show how 54 economies across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, North America, Latin America and Europe, representing 78.6% of the global female labor force, differ in terms of results in women’s progress, knowledge assets and financial access, and entrepreneurship-supporting factors.