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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:

1. To help businesses run and developed by women 
2. To make it easier for women to run and develop businesses
3. To make women’s businesses more visible in economic life and in society as a whole.

State-owned Almi Företagspartner AB with its 17 regional daughter companies also works to promote women’s businesses, through their program ‘Styrelsekraft’ (‘Corporate power’)

Read more (in Swedish): 

www.almi.se