Entrepreneurship for Women in Technology

Women in Europe are under-represented in technical professions and there are many fewer female entrepreneurs than men.

The WITECH project brings together academic institutions and business start-up hubs from across Europe to create a new training course aimed specifically at women. The course, entitled Entrepreneurship for Women in Technology seeks to encourage female scientists, engineers and technologists to develop businesses based on their expertise.

Women represent 52% of the total European population, but only 34.4% of the EU self-employed and 30% of start-up entrepreneurs. This makes female entrepreneurial potential an under-exploited source of economic growth and creativity. When establishing and running a business, women face particular challenges such reconciling business and family concerns, as well as accessing finance, training and business support networks. These challenges discourage many women from pursuing entrepreneurship, and this is especially acute within the ICT sector where women are already under-represented.

WITECH is creating a course on technology entrepreneurship that can be offered in the context of ICT MSc programmes to diversify them and make them more attractive for women.

Funded by the EU’s Erasmus+ initiative, the project is being developed by a business school, three technological universities and three tech start-up hubs from four European countries.

WITECH is fully funded by Erasmus+ , the European Commission’s Programme for education, training, youth and sport for the period 2014–2020.