Female entrepreneurism: soaring around the globe.

Women who create their own businesses can be characterized the world over as fighters engaged in a battle to combat poverty and economic hardship--especially since widespread unemployment in many countries makes salaried positions hard to find. The number-one reason females become entrepreneurs is economic necessity, according to the Women's Entrepreneurism Worldwide Survey, sponsored by Avon Products, Inc. and conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide. Despite universal pessimism over current economic conditions, the number of female entrepreneurs around the world has grown over the past five years in most of the 16 countries surveyed in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Portugal leads with a 153% jump in the number of women starting a business over the past five years, followed by the U.S. (58%), Canada (46%), The Netherlands (40%), Slovenia (30%), and Germany (25%). In the United Kingdom, self-employment among females jumped 70% between 1981 and 1987, but has remained steady since then. Twenty-eight percent of new French businesses are started by women. In the African countries surveyed (Guinea, Cameroon, and Tunisia), the number of female-owned businesses still is small, but has increased 20-25% since 1987. Mexican women business owners are a mere one percent of the female labor force, but their number is expected to increase as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

One factor encouraging entrepreneurism is the high unemployment rate and lack of well-paid salaried jobs, particularly for women. Another is the development of market economies offering new opportunities in many areas such as Slovenia and eastern Germany. Over all, women are better trained, better informed, more independent, and more confident than they were in the past, and these factors have led to a business boom. In the U.S., the limitations of the "glass ceiling" spur women to go out on their own, as does the need...