August 26 marks Women’s Equality Day, which focuses on forging a gender-equal world, celebrating women’s successes and raising awareness of historical and present bias. There’s a lot of discussion at present about women in the workplace and under-representation in industry — 5% of US ownership in the tech industry is women, and only 2.9% of black women study STEM-related bachelor’s degrees across the world.
If we were asked to guess which country had the highest proportion of female business leaders we’d probably guess a progressive Scandinavian country such as Denmark or Norway. In fact Ghana, West Africa, is the highest, with women owning 46.4% of all businesses in 2018. According to reports from the World Bank, Africa has the highest proportion of female entrepreneurs in the world at 27%, followed closely by Europe at 24% and Asia Pacific at 13%.
SA is also home to the biggest gender gap with regard to favourable media coverage, which is highly influential over opinions and perceptions of entrepreneurship. There are initiatives that have been created to encourage female business owners and the economic advancement of women in developing countries.