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Women in Sweden run or start businesses to a lesser degree than men and both men and women are generally less inclined to start and run businesses compared to people in other countries. In 2010, 32 percent of the country’s single person businesses were women and 28 percent of businesses with employees were led by women. Women accounted for 32 percent of new businesses established last year. Most businesses created and run by women are in the healthcare sector, in education and in service industries.
The Swedish government wants to change the relatively low level of female entrepreneurship. Since the centre-right coalition came to power in 2006 it has spent 100m SEK (€11m) every year to champion women entrepreneurs - that’s a total of 800m SEK (€90m) between 2007 and 2014.
The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth is in charge of the drive, and it runs a programme called ‘Promoting women’s entrepreneurship’. The work is divided into three focus areas:
State-owned Almi Företagspartner AB with its 17 regional daughter companies also works to promote women’s businesses, through their program ‘Styrelsekraft’ (‘Corporate power’)
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When the then Minister for Enterprise Maud Olofsson published the government’s planned drive to help women’s businesses, the state-run innovation agency VINNOVA were commissioned to run an interdisciplinary research programme spanning a range of subjects and places of learning. ”Research on women’s entrepreneurship” concluded in 2011 and 19 researchers from eight disciplines talk about their results in the book ”Female entrepreneurship - a goal or a means to an end?” (SNS 2011). It was edited by Eva Blomberg, Gun Hedlund and Martin Wottle.
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Work Research Institute
OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University,
Postboks 4 St. Olavs plass, NO-0130 Oslo
The Nordic Council of Ministers is not responsible for the content
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