KeysFin survey: Women accounting for 37 pct of Romania's total number of shareholders

Romania has currently over 500,000 women shareholders who account for 37 percent of the total number of the country's shareholders, reveals the latest KeysFin survey titled "Women's Entrepreneurship, a Decade of Challenges. The 4.0 Era," which was presented on Wednesday at the Women in Economy 2020 Gala for the award of excellence in women's entrepreneurship.

"In Romania women hold 31.2 percent of the local management positions, slightly below the euro area average, but above the global average. Romania ranks ahead of economically more advanced states, such as Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark or the Netherlands. Although there are still steps to be taken in order to provide equal opportunities for the majority of Romanian women, there has been sustained progress in the business environment in the past decade, above the EU and even the euro area average. All the prerequisites are in place for the next 10 years to bring new advances in female leadership locally and bring along an increase in the aggregate turnover of women-controlled businesses," said KeysFin managing director Roxana Popescu.

According to the survey, considering the companies with a strictly positive turnover, about 135,000 local companies (25 percent of the total) have a majority of female shareholders (over 50 percent of the equity). The aggregate turnover of these companies was 88 billion lei (19 billion euros) in 2018 and accounts for about 6 percent of the total.

The number of female shareholders has increased in the period 2014 - 2018, particularly in Bucharest, from 100,000 in 2014 to 115,000 in 2018; in Ilfov County the number of female shareholders advanced from 14,000 to 22,000, and in Cluj from 20,000 to 27,000.

Despite that, most businesses with women as majority shareholders (over 50 percent of the equity) have five employees on average and a turnover of up to 550,000 lei, being thus listed in the category of micro-enterprises.

As the most frequent age category in the business environment is 30 - 50, over 60 percent of Romania's female shareholders are in the 30 - 50 age bracket, 10 percent are over 60 years old and only 0.2 percent are 18 to 20 years old. AGERPRES