EU Commission data reveals that women are still under-represented in the entrepreneurial arena. According to the Commission’s research, only 34% of Europe’s self-employed, and 30% of start-up entrepreneurs are female. We need to ask ourselves why this is the case. Women still face barriers in the business world, and entrepreneurial experts particularly cite the lack of role models and the difficulties in identifying and accessing funding.

However, the desire to overcome these barriers is incredibly strong. According to research commissioned by eBay[1], over half of women in Europe (58%) and up to 75% in Germany are thinking about starting their own business, citing the benefits of independence and greater self-fulfilment that being your own boss can offer. The flexibility to choose your working time and location are also important pull factors. What better way to ‘Be Bold for Change’ – the theme of International Women’s Day this year – than to help enable the first steps towards entrepreneurial equality?

The good news is that for today’s entrepreneurs, online channels and ecommerce are an opportunity to leapfrog the traditional obstacles to starting up. What’s more, they also let people create new business models that give them the independence, flexibility and personal satisfaction they want.

Starting out online removes the need to find the cash associated with the upfront costs of setting up a physical business. And by using marketplaces such as eBay, even the smallest, newest business has instant access to a global market of millions of buyers, so they can quickly start making money. There are many successful businesses on eBay that started out as a personal hobby or passion, and then grow from there.

Back in 2004, Rachael White founded Thingimijigs in the UK to sell clothes her own children had outgrown. Thirteen years later, Rachael has a full time business with annual sales of more than £1 million.

Of course, starting a business is one thing; growing it is quite another. Two of the most important factors for success are digital skills and an international outlook. In our experience, technology-enabled small businesses export more and survive longer than their bricks and mortar competitors. Ecommerce entrepreneurs also need to keep up to date with the ever-changing demands of technology such as mobile apps, and ever-higher consumer expectations such as free and fast shipping.

Importantly, this is the case everywhere in the world. A female ecommerce entrepreneur in the developing world should have exactly the same online opportunity for success as her counterpart in France or Germany.

Take, for example, Sahar Emami who runs Eyeworld Boutique in France. She sells a unique inventory and highly sought after brands to consumers as far away as Japan, Hong Kong, Israel and Saudi Arabia and exports 94% of her merchandise – giving her a global reach that would have been incredibly difficult to achieve from just a traditional, physical store.

In Germany, Annedore Linder was an early adopter of ecommerce, starting her home and leisure store Anndora on German eBay in the late 90’s. Since then, the business has grown to be one of the biggest in her region - Saxony-Anhalt - achieving sales worth 10 million euros in 2016.

Self-employment is a career opportunity and particularly attractive for the so-called ‘millennial’ generation who want to take control of their own working lives and economic power. While the World Economic Forum predicts that the gender gap won't close entirely until 2186, none of us want to wait that long. Let’s hope that with a strong digital economy and support for entrepreneurship, we can close that gap long before the next century.









[1] Research commissioned by eBay and implemented by Ipsos Mori and Censuswide in February 2016. 5,000 respondents across the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain



