According to an article from SoyEntrepreuner, women in Mexico represent 51.2% of the entire population Even though only 4 out of 10 women older than 14 years old are part of the Economically Active Population (EAP), the situation is changing.

During the past 10 years, female participation in the productive area grew 10%. Such penetration does not only show the amount of job positions women hold, but also the number of companies created and leaded by them. Over 6 million women own their business, most of which are microenterprises.

Most of the times, the reasons to start a business have little to do with an entrepreneur culture. In several occasions women are forced to start a small business due to economic reasons.

These sort of factors cause that businesses started by women tend to have more limitations, particularly in the long term. These projects are created very quickly, lack feasibility studies and are developed in an empirical way. Besides, they lack support and access to Business Promotion Organizations or to the academy, which causes most start ups not to survive the first two years.

The areas where Mexican women participate the most are education and trade, while manufacture and exporting activity are the areas with the lowest amount of entrepreneur women.

The training of an entrepreneur is a key factor to achieve a successful business and the truth is that Mexican women have more access to the educational system than they used to. However, stronger training of entrepreneurship is a general necessity.

Experts state that women want to participate more in the productive sectors. Female participation in traditional businesses is 50%. Nevertheless, the percentage goes down on 25% for companies with intermediate technology and it drops to 10% for high technology companies. This is mainly due to cultural causes: men tend to have more resources among the people they know and experience smaller pressure if they have to spend long working days away from home.

The challenge is to encourage and motivate women to develop more innovative companies and to eliminate cultural stereotypes.