Across the globe, the gender gap in entrepreneurship remains stubbornly persistent.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2010 Women’s Report found that among the 59 countries in which data was collected, only women in Ghana have a higher rate of entrepreneurship than men. Similarly, data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that in 2010, self-employment was more common among men than women in 27 of 29 countries in which information was gathered.The gender gap has been notably persistent in the U.S., where women accounted for the same share of self-employed heads of corporations in 2010 as in 1994 — 22 percent.

How can policy makers reduce the longstanding disparity? The answer depends largely on why the gap continues. One explanation is that women face greater obstacles to company formation than men. If only it were that simple. The researchers for the GEM report found no statistically significant gender-related differences in barriers to business formation.

Related: Women Entrepreneurs Put the Government in the Hot Seat

Moreover, a variety of studies haven’t found any gender difference in the chances of getting financing, once the type of start-up business is factored in. For instance, manufacturing firms are more likely to be financed by outside sources, and men are more likely than women to start manufacturers. But once the different odds of men and women starting companies in industries like manufacturing are accounted for, there is no longer any difference in the chances of obtaining outside financing.

In fact, women actually have greater access to start-up capital when self-financing is taken into consideration. Men and women have access to similar amounts of savings to finance their businesses, but women tend to start less capital-intensive companies than men.
Policy makers could try to deal with one reason for the gender gap: differences in entrepreneurial capabilities. The GEM report indicates that women are much less likely than men to report having the necessary abilities for running their own businesses, particularly in developed countries. The authors of the report propose that policy makers can put in place programs that help women “build their capabilities for business ownership.”

Of course, these efforts will run up against another major factor in the gender gap. Women are less likely than men to start businesses simply because they are less interested in running their own companies, the International Social Survey, conducted in more than 20 countries, shows. If women are less interested in starting businesses than men, they probably won’t be interested in programs that build entrepreneurial capabilities, either.

Gender differences in preferences for entrepreneurship have persisted across several decades. The Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles has surveyed college students about their interest in running their own businesses annually since 1975. Consistently, their data has shown a stronger interest among men than women. In fact, that difference is greater now than it was in the mid-1970s.

Related: Do Women Entrepreneurs Face Gender Discrimination?

Gender differences in interest in entrepreneurship start early. One study by Marilyn Kourilsky, professor emerita at UCLA, and her colleagues showed a 14 percentage point gap in whether high school kids wanted to become business owners someday.

It isn’t that women have more negative views of entrepreneurship as an occupation than men; they are just less interested in the job personally. The GEM report shows no statistical difference between men and women in whether they view entrepreneurship as a good career choice or whether successful entrepreneurs have high social status.

Elected leaders can’t legislate a way to make more women want to start companies, particularly when gender differences emerge as early as grade school. Consequently, the gender gap in entrepreneurship is likely to persist for a long time to come.

Related: Will New SBA Rules Give Women Entrepreneurs Their Due?

Article source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222601

DCU joins prestigious consortium of EU universities -

to foster regeneration through innovation and entrepreneurship

Dublin City University has been invited to join the prestigious European university network, the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU). DCU is the only Irish university to be represented in this network of 11 European universities and three associate partners, from Australia, Mexico and Russia, all of whom share a common commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship. The vision of ECIU is to be a global leader in higher education through the collective expertise of the consortium, their dedication to enhancing the learning experience of students, and their focus on fostering economic and social development in the regions.

The members of ECIU have each established a reputation for working closely with industry and business, for strong interdisciplinary links and an entrepreneurial mindset. ECIU’s strategy is to remain a small, tightly-knit, consortium that collaborates on different activities and makes a difference to both its member institutions and the surrounding society.

Speaking of DCU’s membership of ECIU, President Brian MacCraith said: “It is clear that Innovation and Entrepreneurship are key to Ireland’s economic and social wellbeing and to securing our future prosperity. Harnessing innovation and entrepreneurship can only be successful if the higher education sector and industry are committed to working together and to maintaining open channels of communication. The ethos of ECIU closely resonates with what we in DCU are working hard to achieve through our strong research agenda and support of spin-outs, the work of the DCU Ryan Academy, our work placement programme, INTRA, and most recently our skills attributes programme, Generation 21. We are delighted to be Ireland’s member of ECIU and look forward to our active participation in this dynamic consortium.”

The ECIU was first established in 1997. DCU is the most recent university to join the consortium which includes such other internationally renowned members the University of Strathclyde, UK; Linkopings Universitet, Sweden; Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, Germany; University of Twente, Netherlands and Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal.

Article source: http://www.dcu.ie/news/2012/jan/s0112f.shtml

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Arizona State University alumnus Nicollette Lewis has been named a 2011 College Social Innovator Award Winner by Forbes.com for her startup company Partnered for Success.

The award, presented in partnership with Forbes and the Harvard College Social Innovation Collaborative, seeks to highlight and reward college undergraduates in the U.S. creating positive change at a local, national and global level via social entrepreneurship.

According to the Arizona’s Children Association, nearly 10,000 children are currently in Arizona foster care system. Of these, approximately 700 youth are released from the system upon turning 18 years old with little to no guidance as to their next steps. To help counteract this, Lewis and her company Partnered for Success work with teens aged 15-16 to begin preparing them for the transition.

Partnered for Success provides teens and orphans in the Phoenix metropolitan area foster care system with mentoring and life skills needed to succeed upon “aging out” of the foster system. As part of the program, Lewis and co-founder Priya Nathan work to pair youth with college mentors, community service opportunities and personal growth workshops.

“The workshops are important because they help create awareness about educational options, help prepare youth for life beyond the system and also help job training,” Lewis said. “We combine this with community service so kids can develop another skill set and have something positive to put on their resumes.”

The idea for the program grew out of an assignment from a leadership action course at the W. P Carey School of Business, in which Lewis and Nathan were asked to present their ideas on how to take action in the community. After solidifying their ideas and coming up with a business plan, Nathan and Lewis went on to enter and win the spring 2011 Innovation Challenge.

For Lewis, the cause holds special meaning, as she became an orphan after losing both her parents by age 15.  Although fortunate enough to live with family members, Lewis says was still forced to grow up quickly at a young age.

“I didn’t know how to navigate the legal system to receive social security benefits and how that fits into paying for college,” Lewis said. “There are a lot of other kids who are in that same situation where their needs get ignored because they don’t have the state looking out for them to help with the things that parents would normally do.”

After visiting ASU while in high school, Lewis said she immediately gravitated to the business management degree from the W. P. Carey School of Business. After four years of hard work, she received her bachelor’s degree in December.  

For now, Lewis is enjoying dedicating all of her energy to Partnered for Success and the youth in her program. In the future, however, she dreams of traveling to India to study religion and spirituality, while simultaneously donating her time working in a boarding school in the Himalaya Mountains.

And although she misses her family, Lewis says their words of wisdom will always stay with her.

“My parents instilled a lot of great values in my while I had them. I know they wouldn’t want me to mope and let the negative aspects of everything overcome my life,” said Lewis. “I may as well turn this tragedy into something that I can use to benefit other kids facing similar situations.”

Article source: http://asunews.asu.edu/20120117_lewis

About Edward Glaeser

Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard, is the author of “Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier.”

More about Edward Glaeser

The 2012 election will treat
Americans to a fractious debate about the federal government’s
role in strengthening the nation.

With any luck, we will quickly move past tired exchanges in
which one side implausibly argues that lower federal taxes can
solve everything and the other side unconvincingly asserts that
Washington is the answer.

America needs candidates who will fight for better
government, not just more or less of it. And better government
requires rethinking the relationship between the federal
government and the states.

Many central governments, from Paris to Tokyo, are colossi
that dominate the public sector and the larger economy. In such
places, a new national leader can directly determine the path of
public services. But in the U.S., lower levels of government
wield control of the schools that teach our children, the roads
on which we travel and the regulations that can excessively
limit entrepreneurship and housing supply.

If you believe that infrastructure, regulation and schools
matter for economic success, then you should start thinking
about the thorny ties between Washington and the states.

Separate States

The U.S. began, not as a unified nation, but as a motley
collection of separate states. Those entities ceded authority to
a central government that could coordinate foreign policy,
eliminate internal trade barriers and sort out the American
Revolution’s financial hangover. Nonetheless, we never really
centralized. Even after the Civil War, at the start of the 20th
century, cities and towns collectively spent more on water
provision alone than the federal government spent on everything
except for the post office and the Army.

Over the past 75 years, the federal government has grown
large, due to recessions and the rise of social welfare
programs, such as Social Security and Medicare (USBOMDCR). For good and
ill, the federal government isn’t bound by the balanced-budget
rules that tie states, and it plays the role of spender of last
resort during a downturn.

Free migration across the country means imposing additional
state taxes on companies and the wealthy to fund state-specific
welfare programs. This leads to an influx of the poor and an
exodus of the rich. Social safety nets can’t be just local.

If the candidates want to improve our national government,
they should start discussing ways to streamline our approach to
poverty, though those programs will have to stay national. We
should rethink the bizarre way we approach poverty with four
large, completely separate programs (Temporary Aid to Needy
Families, Section 8 housing vouchers, food stamps and Medicaid)
administered by three departments (Health and Human Services,
Housing and Urban Development, and Agriculture).

If the Republican front-runner, former Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney, were still a consultant at Bain Co., he
would surely want an efficiency-enhancing consolidation that
leaves a single program to determine both aid eligibility and
the right mix of cash and in-kind transfers. Such consolidation
could also make it easier to evaluate program results.

Once we’ve resolved the question of redistribution, we also
need to reconsider the policy areas that contribute to the
nation’s long-run economic competitiveness. That road leads from
Washington to state capitals. President Barack Obama’s election
was accompanied by unrealistic expectations that could barely
have been achieved with the despotic powers of an early Ottoman
Sultan, never mind the limited authority of a U.S. president.

Local governments do much of what matters in our country
and our frequently dysfunctional Congress often makes me wish
that states did even more.

Education Help

Yet while long-term investments in America’s future are
often made by states and localities, the federal government
should help fund education and create incentives to improve
local performance in transportation infrastructure.

Education has evolved from an overwhelmingly local affair
to having more federal involvement. That’s a good thing. Schools
can get “captured” by local interest groups, including
teachers’ unions, and federal intervention can help put students
first.

People leave their childhood homes, bringing their
education with them across state lines, and that creates another
rationale for federal funding. Good schools are the best way of
turning poor children into prosperous adults, which means that
the federal government’s social safety net mission also puts it
into the classroom.

Perhaps most importantly, the federal government has a role
because the strength of our nation ultimately depends on its
human capital.

There is much to like about both No Child Left Behind and
Race to the Top, but the 2012 candidates need to champion the
next generation of education programs, which should combine
generous federal funding with tough local accountability.

The federal government should continue to use its financial
support as a lever to ensure that states don’t block the charter
schools that create competition and have dramatic effects on
test scores. Longer class hours seem to be the secret of the
success of many of these schools, so the federal government
could fund more after-school learning programs, as long as
private suppliers could compete for funding that was then based
on tangible test-score results.

Washington’s large role in transportation is less
defensible. The best case for federal infrastructure spending is
that consumers everywhere benefit from the ability of trucks to
use a nationwide highway system. There is no reason those trucks
can’t pay for their own roads.

Local Roads

It is particularly hard to defend the notion that federal
tax dollars need to go for projects, such as local roads or
transit systems, that serve overwhelmingly in-state
constituencies.

The U.S. needs new infrastructure, but the federal
government shouldn’t pay for it. Why should those who fly, who
are typically prosperous, expect taxpayers to pay for the
infrastructure that they use? In an era of limited energy, why
should the government ever subsidize anyone to drive or travel?

The federal government should be the steward, not the
patron, of transportation infrastructure. The financial
engagement from Washington should be just large enough to prod
states into revitalizing their transportation networks, but the
funding for those programs should come directly from their
users.

The states can provide better schooling and infrastructure,
but those efforts can be strengthened by oversight from the
federal government. Too many states have a tendency to rack up
huge pension liabilities that are masked by unrealistic
expectations about the future returns of those funds’
investments.

The Nunes-Issa-Ryan Public Employee Pension Transparency
Act offered a clever solution to this problem by requiring local
governments to properly report their pension obligations or risk
losing federal tax deductibility for their debt. A similar
approach can also be used to push states to limit the
regulations that prevent new business formation and new housing
construction.

I, too, dream of a renewed America, but that renewal won’t
come from Washington. It depends, above all, on the innovation
and entrepreneurship of ordinary Americans. The most important
public functions, outside of social-welfare programs and the
military, depend not on the federal government but on lower
levels of government.

If the presidential candidates want to find America’s
missing mojo, they need to think harder about how a limited pool
of federal resources can get better behavior out of the states.

(Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard
University, is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is the author of
“Triumph of the City.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.

To contact the writer of this article:
Edward Glaeser at eglaeser@harvard.edu.

To contact the editor responsible for this article:
Max Berley at mberley@bloomberg.net.

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-17/better-federal-government-starts-with-states-commentary-by-edward-glaeser.html

Editor’s Note: President Richard H. Brodhead delivered this address at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration service Sunday in Duke Chapel.

Durham, NC – I offer a warm welcome
and thanks to our Mayor Bill Bell and our distinguished speaker Donna Brazile;
to everyone who will enrich this celebration with their dancing, speaking, and
singing; and to every member of the Duke and Durham communities gathered here
today. This is my eighth MLK Celebration in Duke Chapel and what an
exhilarating, inspiring event I have found it. This event lets us feel the
reality of past accomplishments and the vitality of our present community, and
the call of the work that lies ahead.

First the past.
This imposing campus is only a little more than eighty years old. Its founders
had a dream. They wanted to help human life reach its highest potential: they
wanted to create a great medical center for the care of the body and a great
university to develop the mind and soul. But when Duke University was built, it
extended these benefits to some, but not to all. Like every other institution
in the segregated South — and we all know that segregation reigned de facto in
this country far beyond its official home — this place opened its door to many
but not to African Americans. It was part of a system designed to make people
unequal in reality by denying them equality of opportunity, conferring literal
unequal access to the means of self-fulfillment.

It never totally
worked, of course. In the deepest depths of official segregation, which is when
Duke University was built, a black architect from Philadelphia, Julian Abele, was
chosen as one of its principal designers. Which goes to show: there always was equal
talent across the racial line, and the great things humans made always were the
work of whole human family working together, even when society maintained that
the fiction of separate and unequal.

But a change has
come. A system that had stayed in place decade after decade, impoverishing its
so-called winners while it stigmatized and penalized those to whom they denied
an equal chance, that system turned out to be vulnerable and was in fact dismantled
and remade. On Martin Luther King Day we remember the historical achievement of
men and women who, against powerful resistance and in face of seeming
impossibility, created the fairer, more open, more just world we enjoy every
day. 

Duke is about to
embark on a year-long commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the
admission of African American students to Duke. We are proud that today, Duke
has among the highest percentages of African-American students of any top
university in the United States. We rejoice in the outstanding accomplishments
of these students while they are here and in the great things they will do for the
life of their time. After all, since the doors were opened, this place has been
enriched and enlivened by the very talent that once upon a time was excluded:
every day we live the truth that diversity creates the most powerful learning
environment for every one of us. And since the doors were opened, Duke’s
African American students have gone on to fill every one of the social roles
that require the highest levels of talent and training. Senator Dan Blue, a
Duke Law grad, became the first African American to be elected speaker of the
North Carolina House of Representatives, and (in 2009) the first African
American chair of Duke’s Board of Trustees. Professor Anthony Kelley, a double
Duke graduate and great musicologist, was the winner, this year, of Duke’s highest
award for outstanding teaching. When the selection of White House Fellows was announced
this year, an extraordinarily selective national honor recognizing leadership
and public service, two of the fifteen national winners were Duke graduates and
both were African American: Reggie Chambers, whose career has been in law,
finance, and community entrepreneurship, and Kisha Davis, a physician
specializing in community health.

We are all gainers
from what the Civil Rights Movement did for this university, for Durham, and
for American society at large. Lest we ever be tempted to take it for granted,
today we stop remember how that change was made. But we know that if he were to
come back today, Martin Luther King would hardly feel that the work is done. Racial
and other forms of prejudice have had lingering power long after equal
opportunity became the law of the land. New differences in social advantage — economic,
medical, educational — have grown up in this country even in the official era of
equal rights. If great challenges called forth great courage fifty years ago,
let’s have the courage to face these challenges of our own. This day is the
reminder that men and women can make a difference. Let’s join together to make
ours a better world. 

Article source: http://today.duke.edu/2012/01/rhbmlktalk