Singapore ranks top Asian city in new Woman Entrepreneur Cities Index; fifth globally
The high overall ranking comes from high placement in the Technology, Culture and Talent categories
For women in Asia, Singapore ranks as the best city to set off on the path towards entrepreneurship, and it is the fifth best city in the world; this according to Dell’s 2016 Women Entrepreneur Cities Index.
The index is a measurement of a city’s “ability to attract and support high potential women entrepreneurs” — in layman’s terms, women that want to grow and scale their business.
Singapore was buoyed by a third-place grade in the Technology score, a fifth-place ranking in the Culture category and the city came in eighth in Talent.
“Singapore has established a robust ecosystem to support women entrepreneurs with a strong focus on cultivating home-grown entrepreneurship and promoting digitization across all verticals,” said Margaret Franco, the Vice President of APJ CSES Marketing at Dell.
“As the only Asian city in the top 10 of the WE Cities Index and having emerged as the third most Future Ready Economy in a study conducted earlier this year, Singapore is well positioned on a global landscape for women-owned businesses to thrive and is an exceptional example to Asia of the great contribution women bring to the economic growth of a nation.”
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The 25-city list was chosen from Dell’s Future Ready Economies Model and geographic diversity was a key factor in choosing which cities would be analysed.
Elizabeth Gore, Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Dell, explained the impact the report hopes to make.
“It is time for women to be politically engaged to ensure the right ecosystems are in place for them to scale. If politicians and entrepreneurs partner, dynamic policies can be put in place to close the circle and enhance the process from idea to enterprise. WE Cities can be used as a diagnostic tool to help ensure lawmakers are listening to their needs,” she said.
A string of Asian cities populated the middle of the rankings with Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai and Tokyo ranking 13-17 in order. Seoul was 20, New Dehli came in at 22 and Jakarta rounded out the Asian representation at 24.
While Jakarta made the list, it was pointed-out in a variety of criticisms. The index said the city needs to improve on education, training, access to female mentorship, policies to enable use of technology and it ranked last in all talent categories.
Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei were identified as cities that need to increase “access to markets” for women.
The report was very clear to state that the categories (Market, Culture, Capital and Talent) were specifically designed and scored to be actionable critiques.
There was also a direct causation between a city’s effectiveness in supporting women entrepreneurs with its preparedness for a future ready economy (putting the correlation percentage at 86 per cent). The study cites recent studies from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor that say women are more likely than men to reinvest profits into the community, family and education.
Future ready cities must accept economic uncertainty as the only guarantee moving forward and thus need to cultivate innovation. The report argues that because entrepreneurs are innovators by nature, it is essential to fill the pool with as much talent as possible — both men and women.
The third piece of the puzzle is research showing women have a high potential to grow annual revenue by 20 per cent or more per year.
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And while the report was more of a comparison of regional differences in the roles of women in entrepreneurship, it pointed to some dire gender gaps that it called ‘untapped potential’.
For example, only 2 per cent of women owned a business that had crossed the line of making US$1 million per year in revenue and it said men are 3.5 times more likely to own such a company.
The overall top-5 ranking were (in order): New York City, the Bay Area, London, Stockholm and Singapore.
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