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Norma Gomez and Felicia Siegrist*T formal employment, hiring about 20 percentage points more women in permanent full-time positions thanmen-owned firms across income groups, firm sizes, sectors, and regions. In low-income economies, this gapis even more pronounced, with women-owned firms hiring about twice the share of women compared tomen-owned firms. This pattern may partly reflect women’s concentration in sectors that employ morewomen, but it persists across all sectors. However, structural barriers such as limited access to finance,training, and markets often constrain women’s business performance and job growth, resulting in fewer netjobs per firm compared to men-owned firms. These findings suggest that gender gaps in job creation reflectstructural features of labor markets. Removing barriers to women’s entrepreneurship could not only unlockadditional job growth but also expand women’s access to full-time employment.The untapped economic potential of womenAfrica (17 percent) and South Asia (16 percent). Even inPublic Disclosure Authorized formal full-time employment, women remain concentrated inadministrative,support,and sales roles,with limitedparticipation in technical and operational positions across all Women represent a powerful yet largely untapped sourceof economic growth, both as entrepreneurs and workers.Althoughwomen account for nearly half of the globalworking-agepopulation and demonstrate entrepreneurialintentionscomparable to those of men,they remainsystematicallyunderrepresented in entrepreneurship andlabor markets (GEM 2025). World Bank Enterprise Surveys(WBES) data from 2006 to 2025 show that only 13 percent to20 percent of formal firms have a woman as the top manager.Women’s representation in formal firm ownership is similar,Public Disclosure Authorized In the sample, women represent 38 percent of workers innon-production roles but only 28 percent in production roles,a pattern with direct implications for wages and careerprogression. This occupational concentration not only reflectsgender differences in job quality (Petrongolo and Ronchi2020) but also suggests that existing training and skills Closingthe occupational gaps could yield substantialeconomic gains: income per capita would be almost 20percent higher if women were employed at the same rate asmen (Pennings 2022), and an additional $5 trillion to $6trillion could be added to the global economy if women Women account for 32 percent of full-time workers informally registered firms, highlighting persistent gender gapsinaccess to formal employment.Regional variation issubstantial: women’s participation is highest in East Asia and *Affiliations:Norma Gomez, World Bank, Development Economics, Enterprise Analysis Unit. Felicia Siegrist, World Bank, Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi). Forcorrespondence: ngomez1@worldbank.org; fsiegrist@worldbank.orgAcknowledgements:The authors are grateful for the valuable support provided by World Bank colleagues Mohammad Amin, Daniela Behr, David Francis, Jorge RodriguezMeza, Seung Hee Nam, Wendy Teleki, and Diego Ubfal. Nancy Morrison provided editorial assistance.Objective and disclaimer:This series of Policy Indicators Briefs synthesizes existing research and data to shed light on a useful and interesting question for policydebate. Data for this Brief are extracted from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys database. This Brief carries the names of the authors and should be cited Figure 1 women-owned firms employ a 20 percentage-point highershare of women full-time workers than firms owned by men.This finding holds across firm age, region, and size, despitevariation in baseline levels across contexts. By firm size, 54percent of workers are female in small women-owned firms,compared with 29 percent in men-owned firms, with the gap entrepreneurshipcan have a multiplier effect,increasingfemalelabor force participation and improving overallproductivityand resource allocation in the economy(Chiplunkar and Goldberg 2024). ThisBrief analyzes the contribution of womenentrepreneurs to job creation, including their role in creatingmore jobs for women. It draws on WBES data from across168 economies over 19 years, enabling rigorous cross-country Examiningdifferences across economy income levels,women-ownedfirms employ a higher share of womenfull-time workers than men-owned firms in both high- andlow-income economies. In low-income economies, womenhire about twice as many women as men do, in terms of theshareof women full-time workers.In high-incomeeconomies,the shares are 48 percent and 31 percent,respectively (refer to figure 2). In both groups, the ownershipgap exceeds 20 percentage points, but this gap is particularly In additional analysis, we compare managerial practicesbetween women-led and men-led firms using the WBESmanagement practices index. Women-led firms show slightlyhigher average scores in simple comparisons; however, thesedifferences are small and generally not statistical