Women must be pushed to grow new businesses, says expert[fr][de] 

Fitzsimons, who as well as being the Irish national coordinator for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) runs her own consultancy business, argued that "if you want to make a significant contribution to economic growth, innovation and productivity," businesses started by women should be pushed to "have a growth aspiration at the earliest possible stage". 

She lauded the EU's efforts to get more women to become entrepreneurs as an important first step, but said that current strategies could be even more ambitious. "It's quite clear that Europe needs more 'gazelles', i.e. companies capable of significant growth," Fitzsimons argued, "and the point we're making is that we need to encourage women to not only be self-employed but to break the barrier to employing one or two people, or to move further if they're already significant employers". 

The EU's tactic of providing various forums for women entrepreneurs to brainstorm and identify best practice - the so-called 'spotlight effect' – is an "aggressively positive" strategy which will bear fruit in the future, according to the Irish GEM coordinator. 

Likewise, the Swedish EU Presidency has done a good job of promoting gender equality in entrepreneurship, she said, arguing that the Swedes' promotion of positive action was a welcome break from past policymakers, who almost considered such strategies politically incorrect. 

Fitzsimons noted that EU policymakers must remain aware of the fact that, by and large, women set up different types of businesses to men. 

She observed that "where we're not seeing many women is in innovation, in the high-tech space. Because of this, many of the businesses set up by women do not attract venture capital in the same way as other businesses". 

However, she argued that women can set up businesses that in the long run will attract business angels and venture capital funding, but at the outset, the type of businesses started by women and their aspirations for them usually require different types of funding – an important point when devising future EU strategies, she concluded. 

Fitzsimons was speaking to Olof Gill.

To read the interview in full, please click here.