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There is a growing understanding that gender-blind business support measures do not assist women’s enterprise development to the extent that they assist its male equivalent. Focusing efforts specifically on women’s enterprise development, and measuring the impact of those efforts, is paramount. This paper aims to assess the evolution of two indices that analyze high-impact female entrepreneurship development: the Gender-Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI) and the 2015 Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard. Both utilize data from reliable data sources, yet are limited by the quality and availability of sex-disaggregated data. However, they differ in terms of variable choice, methodology and results.

In this paper, the authors assess the evolution of two indices that analyze high-impact female entrepreneurship development. High-impact female entrepreneurship is defined as firms headed by women that are market-expanding, export-oriented and innovative. The assessment is focused on two new indices, the 2013 and 2014 Gender-GEDI and, the newly created measurement tool, the 2015 Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard.

Both indices rely on existing data from reliable, internationally recognized data sets, yet are limited by the sex-disaggregated data that are currently available. However, they differ in terms of variable choice, methodology and results.

There is an increasing need by researchers and policy makers alike to consolidate existing data to better understand the existing barriers for women entrepreneurs and to be able to benchmark change. This paper assesses two indices that provide insights into the conditions for high-impact women entrepreneurs in a country comparative way.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new index summarizing women’s leadership in entrepreneurial ventures (WLEV) in the context of venture capital (VC) firm portfolios. Gender representation among VC portfolio firms is a concern for academics, and increasingly for practitioners aiming to reap the benefits of gender diversity.

Drawing on the institutional theory and gender role congruity theory, the authors present dimensions of women’s involvement in leadership roles in VC-funded companies. As previous research has not provided standard definitions, the authors clarify the relevant dimensions. In addition, the authors present an empirical analysis of 153 VC fund portfolios and demonstrate women’s involvement across the three key dimensions forming the WLEV Index: involvement in leadership, management and founding of portfolio companies.

The authors present a summary of WLEV index aligned with previous research. The index has suitable characteristics for future research and introduces a first comparison with existing statistics. The authors’ findings show relatively low scores of women’s leadership in the VC portfolio companies investigated, especially as compared to average USA companies.

This paper introduces standardized definitions for women’s leadership in terms of: women-led, women-founded and women-managed. This paper also introduces a methodology and constructs an index to uniformly compare VC firm portfolio companies according to all three dimensions of women’s leadership. These contributions can be expected to form the basis of future research on gender representation in VC portfolio companies.