One in five enterprises in Italy is founded by women

The portrait of female entrepreneurs is interesting: on average, they have higher levels of education than their male colleagues (25% of female entrepreneurs have a university degree compared to 21% of male entrepreneurs) and in 85% of cases they come from a previous career outside the family business. When they choose to set up their own business, they do so as a path to self-fulfilment (in 37% of cases) and not as an alternative to the lack of employment (27%). This motivation generates businesses that are more oriented towards quality and the enhancement of human resources. This also emerges when considering the attention paid to employees: 28% of female businesses, in fact, adopt measures to reconcile work and private life times (compared to 22% of non-female businesses) and the presence of graduate leadership increases attention to welfare up to 40%.

One of the sore points for the sector is certainly that of business financing. 74% of women's businesses rely on their own or family capital for start-up. A factor that, while generating greater initial stability, can curb the propensity of businesses to invest in a structured manner.

If, however, female entrepreneurs decide to have recourse to bank credit (a route taken by 37% of female enterprises, similar to that of non-female enterprises), in 8 out of 10 cases they invest (compared to 70% of female enterprises without bank financing).

Women entrepreneurs are also very likely to apply for incentives: 27% have already used them and 19% intend to use them (shares of 23% and 18% in the case of non-female entrepreneurs). The most used measures? Regional aid and tax credit; 15% have used incentives managed by Invitalia.

Despite their smaller average size, female-led companies show a good propensity to invest, especially in tangible assets (machinery, ICT equipment) and organisational modernisation. Moreover, those using start-up financing and public incentives show, compared to the others, a higher labour productivity (+33%), which rises further (+40%) when women-led companies also focus on human capital training. In addition, these enterprises show a +10% higher likelihood of investing than other women-owned enterprises, which becomes +14% when they also engage in training.

"Rome is Italy's leading province in terms of the number of female businesses: almost 100 thousand (96,421) as at 30 September 2025. And the female employment rate in Rome has reached 58.5 per cent, the highest value ever,' underlines Lorenzo Tagliavanti, president of the Rome Chamber of Commerce, who adds: 'However, these data, read from a different perspective, make clear the gaps that still exist in a variety of areas and make the objective of definitively overcoming the age-old inequalities in terms of gender equality still seem far away. In absolute terms, the rate of feminisation of businesses, in Rome as in Italy, is still too low: practically one business in five is pink. The presence of women in top positions is, then, still limited. First of all, we need to work to improve a bureaucratic, legal and fiscal environment that often hinders rather than facilitates business activity. And, at the same time, to intervene on the problems that most affect women's participation in the economic life of the country, including the difficulty of access to credit, particularly for small businesses