Romanian Women’s Entrepreneurship, Record Level Of Almost 600.000 Ladies Directly Involved In Business

Almost 600,000 women are shareholders or partners in companies active on the Romanian market, 11% above the 2019-level and 46% more than in 2013, according to data from the Trade Register analysed by KeysFin specialists.

“The figure represents almost 37% of the total shareholders and partners in Romania, and if we add the Sole traders / Individual partnerships / Family partnerships, we reach approximately 800,000 women directly involved in the local business environment”, said Diana Florescu, KeysFin economic analyst, one of the most important providers of business information solutions in Romania.

According to the KeysFin analysis published on the occasion of the International Women’s Day (March 8^th) and considering only the companies that reported their results to the Ministry of Finance and had positive Shareholder Equity in 2021, about 167,000 local companies (20% of the total) are directly, majority-owned by women (over 50% of the capital). The turnover of these companies was of lei 171 billion (the equivalent of EUR 35 billion) and constitutes approximately 9% of the total in 2021.

Businesses in which Romanian women are active as majority shareholders or partners (>50% of capital) have, on average, three employees, an annual net result of almost lei 150 thousand and a turnover of over one million lei, 94% of these being micro-enterprises in 2021.

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Romanian women controlled 98.5% of local companies with female shareholders, so they aren’t the only ones who appear in the top of nationalities, being followed by female investors from China, Italy, Germany, and Moldova with shares between 0.3 and 0.1% of total in 2021.

In total, ladies from over 100 countries are present as a direct, majority shareholder or partner in the Romanian business landscape.

ROMANIA HAD THE SECOND LOWEST GENDER PAY GAP IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

“There aren’t many charts that favourably place Romania in the top of the European Union, but in 2021 we recorded the second lowest gender pay gap, of only 3.6% being immediately under the leader in terms of living standards (measured by the minimum wage), Luxembourg, which recorded a negative gender pay gap, of -0.2% for the first time in history. It means that women in Luxembourg employed in Industry, Services and Constructions (Public Administration, Defense and Compulsory Social Security were excluded) were on average better paid than men according to Eurostat data”, said Diana Florescu, KeysFin economic analyst.

At the other end, more developed countries such as Estonia, Austria or Germany had significant differences between men’s and women’s salaries, between 17.6%-20.5% in 2021.

TOP SECTORS IN WHICH ROMANIAN WOMEN EARN THE MOST

The local average net salary has increased 2.3-fold in the last 10 years, reaching lei 3,416 in 2021, according to the latest broken-down data from the National Institute of Statistics. Thus, the difference between the salaries obtained by women and men, when considering the average net salary, reduced from 9.9% in 2012, to 4.6% in 2021.

Romanian women recorded the highest salaries in IT&C, where the average was lei 6,115, Public Administration, a segment in which women earned 5,420 lei per month, and the Mining&Quarrying, a category that brought female employees lei 5,172 net per month in 2021. On the other hand, women in Romania who work in Accomodation&Food have the lowest salaries, with an average monthly net salary of lei 1,849 in 2021.

There are economic sectors in which women in Romania are better paid than men, and first to mention are Administrative&Support Activities, where Romanian women earn 21% more, reaching, on average, lei 2,883 net monthly, Constructions (but in the case of this sector, the number of female employees is 7 times lower than men, respectively 52 thousand nationally), Public Administration (7% more), Mining&Quarrying (6%) or Transport&Warehousing (3% more) in 2021.

At the other end, the largest gender pay gap recorded in 2021 was found in Finance&Insurance and Manufacturing, sectors where men earn on average 29% and respectively 20% more than women.

From the number of female employees (public and private) perspective, in the last 10 years there was a 17% increase, reaching 2.4 million, while the number of male employees increased by 12.7%, to 2.7 million in 2021. Most female employees in Romania were employed in the Manufacturing industry where 517 thousand women work (21% of total women), in Trade, 463 thousand (19%), and in Health Care, with 337 thousand (13.9 % of the total).