Entrepreneurship in Switzerland: Business activity by women

The percentage of women entrepreneurs remains lower than that of their male counterparts in Switzerland.

In 2022, only 7.2 per cent of women were ready to engage in early entrepreneurial activities (which do not necessarily translate into a company), compared to the 12.3 per cent of men according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Switzerland 2020/2021 National Report (GEM). The ratio of female entrepreneurs compared to their male counterparts increased from 0.59 to 0.76 between 2021 and 2022.

In 2021, just under half of business startups in Switzerland (46.7%) involved one or more women, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office (OFS).

Number of new enterprises established in 2021
Total	43,037
By women and men	4,090	9.5%
By men	22,929	53.3%
By women	16,018	37.2%

Source: FSO, Statistics on business demography 2021

Female entrepreneurship in Switzerland

Women are still under-represented in the category of sole proprietors or employees of their own company, but they are gaining ground. This percentage of women in the population of entrepreneurs stood at 40% in Q3 2023, whereas it only reached 28.2% in 1991, according to the Swiss Labor Force Survey (SLFS) by the FSO. The percentage of female entrepreneurs in the resident female population stood at 7.2% in Q3 2023, versus 11.1% for their male counterparts.