As we enter a more gender equal world, we are seeing more women entering industries that were once dominated by men. In the United Kingdom alone, nearly half of its overall workforce is made up of women. In fact, the once male dominated industry STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) had more female employees in 2014 than it had two years ago. Based on a September 2014 WISE statistics, female professional engineers increased to 13,255 in the UK, which is more than double than that in 2012. This goes to show that the ladies are catching up with males, especially in the business sector and we predict they can rule the industry by next year. Here are some reasons why we think so:

1. Tapping the female market

Among the two genders, women spend more time shopping than males. In a statistic report, 56 percent of women purchase items under $50 (€41) weekly, compared to men with 45 percent. Females also have more purchasing power since 80 percent of consumer spending is controlled by them, even in categories that are dominated by men such as electronics and automobiles. But, apart from being stereotyped as shopaholics, females understand how their own gender works, making it easier for female entrepreneurs to develop products or services that meet the female market’s needs.

2. More mobile tech content consumption

Based on the 2014 Mobile Behavior Report by the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, 93 percent of women place a higher importance on mobile’s ability to access content than the men with 87 percent. This goes to show that women generally utilize all areas of their mobile to fuller effect to source content from various avenues.

Given their outlook on mTech, they are more likely to maximize applications that assist them with their business transactions and payments. We should expect the Bring Your Own Device schemes to be led by women in the coming years. As devices become more powerful such as tablets that can make and receive calls, women entrepreneurs will have more reasons to work on the go and consume digital content and information even while away from their offices.

3. Strong networking groups

Today, women seem to be more united than before with groups such as the Spark and Mettle organization giving assistance in providing coaching and collaborative sessions to strengthen character and expand networks with women groups. Not only limited to females, the group also assists men in building their characters. Initiatives such as these will help them with starting their businesses and help source potential business opportunities.

In fact, some big companies, including government agencies, have seen its potential, and sometimes look at acquiring innovative training groups such as these. “We need to continue to build out the ecosystem so that women are an active part of the funding cycle. We still have a long way to go,” said Peggy Wallace, Golden Seeds’ managing director.

4. "Some leaders are born women"

This was a quote from Shelly Porges, a former senior advisor for the US Department’s Global Entrepreneurship Program, during the Dyson Symposium on Women in Leadership last February 2014. She rallied along with her role model, Hillary Clinton, to discuss women’s leadership. “Cast off the traditional connotation of a male figure representing leadership, and instead leave room to imagine that some of the world’s largest visionaries were females,” said Shelly Porges, Sr. Advisor of the US State Department's Global Entrepreneurship Program.

Being a leader also includes facilitating a team, a group, or a whole corporation on your own. This is a big duty that will require careful decision making, while encouraging them to interact freely with one another. This is quite easy for women as they are known to have an innate warm, motherly nature that makes them easy to approach, giving them an advantage when it comes to confiding in one another.

5. Women investors are growing in numbers

Sudan Duffy of the Center for Women’s Leadership said, “The women angel-networks themselves are getting the word out about the importance of women participating in the investment process and are doing a great job at welcoming new women in the investing community.” In the United States, women are controlling half of the current investments in the economy. Based on research from ‘Women and Money: Matters of Trust,’ women represent over 40 percent of the overall gross invested assets in the nation that is worth more than $600,000. With the continuous growth in the number of women investors, it is expected that after 15 years (2030), women will start to control around two-thirds of the US’ overall wealth.
We believe it’s about time women were more aggressive in the highly competitive industry of entrepreneurship. More and more female entrepreneurs are now showing that they have got what it takes to succeed in business.

Which female entrepreneur has inspired you to be better every single day? Let us know in the comments section below.